Incidence of cultural, economic, and environmental factors in the emergence of born-global companies in Latin America

Research Summary: This paper examines the effect of key cultural and economic factors on the emergence of born-global (BG) companies. Such factors include the intentions and the growth aspirations of the entrepreneur, as well as the country’s characteristics in terms of its income per capita and the complexity of its economic system. The analysis also highlights how the environment affects the importance of the aspirations to be BG. Our work expands the literature on BGs in Latin America by analyzing macroeconomic aspects and specific features of the entrepreneur and the environment as possible determinants of BG character. The results reveal that the entrepreneur’s intentions and aspirations, along with environmental factors and the economic growth in Latin America, contribute to a firm’s probability of becoming a BG company.

Managerial Summary: Firms that internationalize at an early stage of their life are known as born-global (BG) companies. We analyze the influence that the key cultural factors of a company have on the creation of BG companies. Such factors include the entrepreneur’s intentions and growth aspirations, in addition to various economic and environmental factors. The findings show that individual factors, in combination with economic growth, play a more important role than those factors related to the entrepreneur’s innovativeness and the level of knowledge intensity associated with a country’s export basket.