Transnational Entrepreneurship: Distinctive Features and a New Definition

• Main Author: Eduardo Bailetti
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Carleton University 2018-09-01
• Series: Technology Innovation Management Review
• Subjects: cross-border; definition; entrepreneurship; features; topic modelling; transnational
• Online Access: https://timreview.ca/article/1184

Definitions of transnational entrepreneurship are too general making it difficult to understand what distinguishes transnational entrepreneurship from other forms of entrepreneurship. In addition, these definitions identify the “immigrant”, “ethnic”, or “migrant” entrepreneur as the focal actor rather than the company. This makes it difficult to align transnational entrepreneurship with the theory of the firm and provide practical insights to practitioners. This article examines 11 definitions of transnational entrepreneurship, discovers the groups of words that best represent the information in a corpus comprised of 44 journal articles, identifies the key features that distinguish transnational entrepreneurship from other forms of entrepreneurship, and advances a new definition of transnational entrepreneurship. The results indicate that transnational entrepreneurship has two key distinctive features: cross-border investment logic and institutional distance – the difference in institutional context between countries. Accordingly, transnational entrepreneurship may be usefully defined as “a cross-border investment to acquire, combine, and recombine specialized individuals and heterogeneous assets to create and capture value for the company under conditions of institutional distance and uncertainty”. This proposed definition builds on the features that make transnational entrepreneurship distinctive, is consistent with the theory of the firm, and carries implications for how to grow companies at an early stage.