Internationalisation of Sales. New ventures tend to approach international markets relatively early in their organisational life cycles (Oviatt and XxXxxxxxx 1994). Internationalisation can be considered as an important event in the development of new ventures. Entrepreneurial 8 In this study, size is defined as the number of employees. This is consistent with many different empirical studies in the field of entrepreneurship. 9 The number of possible interactions among organisational members follows the formula n (n − 1) and describes an exponential relationship. firms enter foreign markets for three main reasons: institutional factors such as regulations, industry factors such as increased competition, and organisational factors. New ventures can thus realise additional growth and returns (Xxxxxxxxx, Sapienza, and Xxxxxxx 1996; Zahra, Ireland, and Hitt 2000). International expansion of start-up firms in the initial years is often limited to foreign sales. However, new ventures need to consider that successful internationalisation may require a change of the initial strategy, which has been successful for domestic sales (XxXxxxxxx and Oviatt 1996). Internationalisation is especially promising for technology-based new ventures. Comparing new product successes with failures, the corresponding markets of the former group are larger, highly international, and indicate higher international growth rates (Cooper and Xxxxxxxxxxxx 1990). According to empirical research, early internationalisation of entrepreneurial firms has a positive and significant influence on the breadth and depth of technological learning. In addition, the breadth of learning is further driven by knowledge integration (Zahra, Ireland, and Hitt 2000). Although highly important, the internationalisation of a start-up firm still imposes significant challenges on the management team. Learning in entrepreneurial ventures is very effective when triggered by critical events or challenges (Xxxx 2005). Consequently, I formulate the following hypothesis.
