International Entrepreneurship: Definitions and Evolution of a New Field of Research

Amina Ben Mahrouche

Abstract

International entrepreneurship is an emerging field, at the intersection between entrepreneurship and international entrepreneurship. Through this paper, we will present, in the first place, the evolution of the latter from its emergence in 1987 until 2020. Next, we will develop the different concepts and definitions concerning international entrepreneurship, and finally, we conclude with future research tracks.

We have noticed a significant evolution of publications since 2004, in 2020 one hundred and thirty-four articles have been published on the database "Scopus", we have used holes concepts as keywords when researching, which are: "international entrepreneurship" or "Born global" or "international new venture".

About the definition of international entrepreneurship, we found that there is no consensus. There is a multitude of definitions proposed by various researchers specialized in the field such as Oviatt and McDougal.

Despite the growing amount of research in the field of international entrepreneurship, there are still many avenues for future research. Fields such as sociology can bring a lot of understanding to the phenomena related to international entrepreneurship.