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- Globalization, globalizing world economy, markets, internationalization process, internationalization strategies, market exploitation strategies, local production activities, foreclosure, decision-making process model (1)
- Technology entrepreneurship (1)
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- innovation clusters in Africa, Africa, Kenya (1)
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Technology entrepreneurship is on the rise around the world. In the quest for change, comparative advantage, innovation creation and socioeconomic progress, a turn to entrepreneurial solutions to persistent developmental challenges has provided a powerful and captivating alternative to past solution approaches. As a consequence, innovation clusters have mushroomed, and an enthusiasm for entrepreneurial activity has caught the attention of many in localities as diverse as Kenya’s Silicon Savannah, Nigeria’s Yabacoon Valley, South Africa’s Silicon Cape, Chile’s Chilecon Valley and Germany’s Silicon Allee, to mention just a few. Yet despite this new, vibrant entrepreneurial activity that continuous to nourish a global wave of excitement, we know little about how technology entrepreneurship is actually performed in these disparate places. This doctoral thesis sought to fill this gap by taking a look “behind the scenes” of one of the most prominent innovation clusters in Africa — Kenya’s information and communications technology (ICT) sector. In this empirical setting, industry participants were in the midst of actively negotiating and rationalizing how technology entrepreneurship needs to work to make it a success, to unlock the benefits of a knowledge economy for Kenya and to carve out a space in the global innovation landscape for innovations made in Africa. Three interconnected academic papers form the core of this thesis. The first paper provides a detailed illustration of the local and global prescriptions that influence entrepreneurial action in Kenya’s ICT sector and inspired the conceptualization of a dynamic process model of globalization. The second paper offers a fine-grained view into the work realities of Kenyans and the generation of the multidimensional work portfolios across which workers diversify their activities to achieve economic survival, create wealth and exert agency for change. The third paper is a theoretical piece that theorizes the process of nonnative organizational forms diffusing and becoming adopted in new organizational environments. All in all, the thesis can be seen as an attempt to study the complexities that reign in African economies through an organizational lens and thus to foster a global organizational scholarship research agenda and discourse that can be of benefit to the many rather than just the few.
Globalization is altering the international economic environment. To remain competitive and
gain future competitive advantage, corporations need to operate successfully in an
international context. Exploiting the potential offered by the increasingly global economy
requires the effective capture of markets. Although the world economy is becoming
globalized, some international markets continue to have high entry barriers and are thus
closing themselves off to foreign companies. These barriers impede access to these markets
and thus hamper corporations from adequately exploiting them. However, corporations
should by no means allow these markets to lie fallow since this would deprive them of the
possibility to participate in prospective growth markets. Corporations must consequently
promote adequate internationalization and engage in market exploitation strategies to remain
successful in an internationally competitive environment.
It is the aim of this research to support corporations within the processes of
internationalization and market exploitation. Therefore, the research explicitly focuses on
developing an encompassing model that supports corporations in identifying markets, which,
in order to be exploited effectively, require local production activities. Typically, this entails
markets that show foreclosure tendencies. A decision-making process model for corporations’
internationalization and market exploitation strategies structured in different phases is
developed, and relevant influencing factors are compiled and assigned to the appropriate
phases. The process model, which aims to enable corporations to follow a structured
internationalization and market exploitation approach by analyzing the most decisive
influencing factors at respective process phases, is thereby targeted at empowering
corporations to adequately exploit the potential the globalizing world economy offers. The aim
of this research is thus to develop a comprehensive decision-making process model to effectively support corporations during the process of internationalization.
