This master’s research investigates how Nordic cleantech firms exploit opportunities in emerging markets. Emerging markets showcase significant opportunities for provision of sustainable cleantech solutions, which can be exploited by cleantech firms to enhance their commercial viability. Opportunity exploitation studies in emerging market contexts have been largely understudied in international entrepreneurship. This qualitative research utilized semi-structured interviews, a multi case study design involving three Nordic cleantech firms, and thematic data analysis to collect detailed information on Nordic cleantech opportunity exploitation activities and stages. Analyzing the findings using a conceptual framework based on the opportunity exploitation theory, we discover that Nordic cleantech firms exploit opportunities in emerging markets in three phases namely, exploitation pre-operationalization phase, exploitation operationalization phase and exploitation post-operationalization phase. Exploitation pre-operationalization stages involve making evaluation of the opportunity, assessing stakeholders, and developing a project management plan for the exploitation operationalization; the exploitation operationalization phase covers the market entry modes, and describes activities and strategies deployed by cleantech firms to commence commercial activities within the market; and the exploitation post-operationalization phase describe steps taken to increase the firms’ knowledge and leverage such experiential knowledge for further opportunity exploitation. The research findings showed a variance from the theoretical opportunity exploitation propositions for new technology intensive firms including cleantech firms. The insights generated from this research have implications for the decision making of managers of Nordic cleantech firms looking to exploit international opportunities within emerging markets and theoretical implications for making further opportunity exploration studies considering the emerging market context.

Entrepreneurial opportunity recognition is an increasingly prevalent phenomenon. Of particular interest is the ability of promising technology based ventures to recognize and exploit opportunities. Recent research drawing on the Austrian economic theory emphasizes the importance of knowledge, particularly market knowledge, behind opportunity recognition. While insightful, this research has tended to overlook those interrelationships that exist between different types of knowledge (technology and market knowledge) as well as between a firm’s knowledge base and its entrepreneurial orientation. Additional shortfalls of prior research include the ambiguous definitions provided for entrepreneurial opportunities, oversight of opportunity exploitation with an extensive focus on opportunity recognition only, and the lack of quantitative, empirical evidence on entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. In this dissertation, these research gaps are addressed by integrating Schumpeterian opportunity development view with a Kirznerian opportunity discovery theory as well as insights from literature on entrepreneurial orientation. A sample of 85 new biotechnology ventures from the United States, Finland, and Sweden was analyzed. While leaders in all 85 companies were interviewed for the research in 2003-2004, 42 firms provided data in 2007. Data was analyzed using regression analysis. The results show the value and importance of early market knowledge and technology knowledge as well as an entrepreneurial company posture for subsequent opportunity recognition. The highest numbers of new opportunities are recognized in firms where high levels of market knowledge are combined with high levels of technology knowledge (measured with a number of patents). A firm’s entrepreneurial orientation also enhances its opportunity recognition. Furthermore, the results show that new ventures with more market knowledge are able to gather more equity investments, license out more technologies, and achieve higher sales than new ventures with lower levels of market knowledge. Overall, the findings of this dissertation help further our understanding of the sources of entrepreneurial opportunities, and should encourage further research in this area.

International entrepreneurship (IE) exists at the interface of two distinct research fields - entrepreneurship and international business (IB). However, IE studies typically fail to integrate research from both fields, leaning much more towards IB. This study uses core concepts from entrepreneurship to explain the export performance of early internationalising firms. It contributes to the network and international opportunity-based view in IE by incorporating the twin concepts of exploration and exploitation into a dynamic capability perspective, showing how these affect export performance. While early internationalising firms including born globals constitute an important component in IE, empirical interest in this field focuses on high-tech and knowledge-intensive industries from developed countries. In addition, research in the field is mainly of qualitative nature investigating small numbers of firms. Therefore, much is unknown about how early internationalising firms differ in their dynamic network capabilities and opportunity related capabilities. We investigate these aspects using structural equation modelling based on a sample of 647 SMEs and large, young and mature export start-ups operating in the traditional low-tech apparel industry from a South Asian developing country (Bangladesh). This study shows that both network exploitation and exploration capabilities positively influence international opportunity exploitation and exploration capabilities. In turn, international opportunity exploitation and exploration capabilities influence export performance. This study also demonstrates that the relationship between network capabilities and export performance is both direct and indirect through the mediation of the twin international opportunity capabilities. The moderation analysis of firm age and size sheds additional light on the liabilities of newness and smallness of early internationalising firms. Interestingly, we find that the liabilities of smallness and newness do not have the same influence in different stages of IE. The role of firm size is more pronounced at the earlier stage of IE. In contrast, firm age accentuates in the later stage of the twin opportunity capabilities-export performance relationship. One possible explanation of this may be that developing and managing networks for the purpose of exploiting and exploring international opportunities is the most effortful and resource demanding stage in the entrepreneurial process. During this stage, owner-managers assess their own organisational resources, explore the possibilities of attracting external network resources and match their own resources with those of network partners. This stage reflects what is called "resource orchestration" in the strategic entrepreneurship literature. In the later stage, when opportunities are already developed and exploited, only minimal resources are then needed to achieve performance advantage. Age becomes a dominant factor because older firms derive greater performance advantage than younger firms due to their accumulated experience and learning throughout the years. This study indicates that firms may overcome their liability of smallness by connecting with new foreign partners, especially customers, resulting in more export orders. Policy makers can also help them connect with new partners by organising trade fairs, trade missions and sponsoring other promotion programmes. With respect to the liability of newness prevailing in the later stage, owner-managers should work with prominent business partners to help them get good referrals and overcome the lack of legitimacy in establishing new relations. Finally, the managers of early internationalising firms should be empowered to develop relationships with external partners.

This study departed from a research basis being somewhat lacking in the context of green building certification and especially the two-folded problem, regarding the characteristics of the network of business relationships and how an energy supply company should exploit opportunities in this network context and its relationships. As such, the purpose of this study is to investigate and analyse the network context and its business relationship characteristics, as well as to present recommendations of how an energy supply company can engage green building certification and cope with the business relationships in order to exploit business opportunities. Based on previous research regarding the real estate industry, energy service industry and the construction industry, a well-founded literature base could be extended further by applying theoretical concepts related to business relationship elements and strategy-making. The nature of green building certification and to fulfil the purpose of the study, called for a qualitative research strategy performed through a multiple-case study design. This led to the investigation of four certification projects, subject to certifications in the systems of EU GreenBuilding and Miljöbyggnad, where the most important actors, relationships and project contents constitute the empirical data. The findings of this thesis suggest that the relationships are characterized as having a short-term focus and an avoidance to become interdependent. In this manner elements such as commitment and adaptation are shown as rather shallow, where actions of commitment are not typically short-term sacrifices for a long-term mutual benefit and adaptations mostly occur with respect to specific projects. The adaptive behaviour is also more or less explained as a standardized procedure, avoiding relationship specific investments. Trust is an important element mostly in order to reflect the competence of the counterpart, where previous successful projects indicate the skill and knowledge. Despite the characteristics of the relationships, the benefits of long-term, high involvement, cooperative relationships were highlighted as good aspects to consider in this context. These characteristics, along with outspoken market demands, acted as the basis for the development of recommendations for an energy supply company in terms of a step-wise action framework. In this sense, the first acknowledgement of the framework is that the current position related to green building certification projects of an energy supply company is rather unestablished, with only one exception found. This implies a strategic approach in terms of understanding how to develop and maintain their business relationships, with respect to the previously mentioned characteristics. Through a successful utilization of the action framework (with respect to certain barriers to overcome), this thesis emphasizes a wide range of opportunities such as to have a proactive approach, maintain interactions between projects, to develop the knowledge, to offer a holistic approach and to utilize long-term cooperative relational benefits. The analysis and framework is highly suitable when applied by an energy supply company, but the authors also argue for the findings to be of relevance also for other practitioners in the context of green building certification. In addition, the authors believe that the orientation of this thesis might be a trigger for future similar research approaches, applied in different contexts.

Despite significant research output in recent decades on international new ventures (INVs),little attention has been paid to understanding the processes and conditions under whichthe entrepreneur identifies and exploits an opportunity and subsequently creates valuewithin the firm. As a result, the dynamics involved in the role of the entrepreneur during theestablishment and internationalization of INVs remain in a black box. In order to understandthe context, interaction among players and other dynamics involved before, during, and afterthe establishment of the INV’s creation and development, a different approach is needed. Theaim of this dissertation is to describe and understand the role of entrepreneurs in the processof establishment and internationalization of international new ventures. Three longitudinal case studies were conducted between 1999 and 2008 with a total of 108interviews using snowball sampling. In addition, comprehensive secondary data have beencollected to enrich the empirical cases with thick descriptions, and to enhance content validityas well as the reliability of the research. This study offers a more nuanced picture of how entrepreneurs’ characteristics influencethe international development of their firms. For example, it appears that it was neitherthe previous foreign experience, the education, nor the previously developed internationalnetwork (as suggested by previous literature) that can be credited for the rapid and vastinternationalization of the case firms. Instead, it is suggested that an entrepreneur’schildhood and prior life story directly influences their behaviour in the INV. We proposethat different types of entrepreneurs are important factors to understanding firms’ differentinternationalization patterns. Depending on the backgrounds of the entrepreneurs, theydeveloped preferences, skills, and especially desires that would come to affect the totalbehaviour of their future organizations. This study also develops the notion of psychicdistance into three separate spaces - the physical, the mental and the social space. Forexample, the context and experience during childhood creates the foundations for theentrepreneurs’ mental and social space, which can separately, but also in relation toeach other, offer a more accurate and deeper understanding of the actions taken by theentrepreneurs in the INV. Furthermore, this study has shown that the role and characteristicsof the entrepreneur do change over time, which also determines the individual’s sensitivity toopportunities and the international behaviour of the company.