Читать книгу Entrepreneurial Finance - Robert D. Hisrich - Страница 17

In the past, companies ventured abroad only after having established and grown a strong business at home. They would start by approaching nearby countries and progressively establish partnerships. For example, Johnson & Johnson only decided to enter a foreign market 33 years after its inception. The country they chose to enter was an easy choice, Canada, as it could be easily reached by simply driving across the border (Isenberg, 2008). Walmart went global first in Mexico, rather than Canada, despite the language difference due to its closer geographic proximity to the company's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Nowadays, companies are born global. From outsourcing manufacturing in China, employing a team of programmers in India, seeking funding on international platforms such as Kickstarter.com, and even selling their products internationally through the Internet, entrepreneurs and investors seek the best deals worldwide with little to no boundaries.

The world has changed, and today's ventures do business in several countries before dominating their local markets. Two main explanations justify entrepreneurs crossing borders: (1) defensive and (2) offensive motivations (Isenberg, 2008). Defensive motivation leads entrepreneurs to go overseas to produce products that are competitive in the global market. When one of the authors produced his first mobile software application for the iPhone, he requested budgets from several development teams in Europe and the United States using elance.com. The average fee for a U.S.-based production was $20,000 at the time. In Western Europe, the price for the same project would fluctuate between $9,000 and $15,000. He ended up recruiting a developer from Southeast Europe who charged $3,000, which included several rounds of revisions and testing. Before he had even started the venture, he had out-sourced the software development of the upcoming product at a fraction of the price it would have been to develop it in the United States.

An offensive approach occurs when entrepreneurs discover a new business opportunity that involves maintaining a presence beyond their country's boundary. This was the case of the now famous mobile game Angry Birds, created by Rovio (Kendall, 2011). While their roots are in Finland, home of Nokia Corporation, they decided to pass on the opportunity to do business locally and target their upcoming game to iPhone users predominantly present in the United States. In December 2009, Rovio launched the game Angry Birds through Apple's iPhone app store. It rapidly became a best seller, and since then, the game has been downloaded more than a billion times by smartphone owners from all over the world.

Being global is not a choice anymore for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurial ventures need to be able to leverage the global economy and its advantages to become competitive both locally and globally.