While prior literature explaining why some recognise international opportunities but not others (cf. Shane & Venkataraman 2000) has focused on examining the role of specific factors in the process, my research suggests that the multitude of factors affecting an individual’s opportunity recognition in a specific context is much broader and that the recognition of opportunities is not determined by any individual character. Namely, this thesis introduces the important role of complex mental images in individual entrepreneurs’ or managers’ recognition of
opportunities (see Article 2). Mental images concern the contexts in which opportunities may be recognised, and in the case of collective international opportunities, these contexts are specific foreign markets and collaboration groups. While prior studies have investigated the role of specific mental images in opportunity recognition, such as that of the self and that of the opportunity (Mitchell & Shepherd 2010), this study suggests that it is highly challenging to distinguish such images. Instead, I suggest that of great importance is the image of the overall opportunity context, which includes images of the self and opportunity entangled through its constituent factors. To get a hold of these factors, I suggest grouping them under the three following groups: (1) prior experiences regarding the context (i.e. specific foreign market or collaboration group), (2) attractiveness of the context, and (3) personal/firm strategies and resources. The constituent factors under all these groups can be either positive or negative, altogether constituting more or less a positive mental image of the context (see Article 2 and Article 3). This influences how the person interprets information and events concerning the context.
Indeed, the findings of this thesis suggest that the overall status of the mental image impacts the sensemaking processes by which an entrepreneur or manager generates meaning from and decides to act upon changes in a specific opportunity context (see Article 4). The sensemaking may manifest as auspicious or ominous sensemaking, the former indicating that the individual wants and decides to engage in the context and the latter indicating that s/he wants to distance him/herself from it. In other words, the context is viewed either as favourable and attractive or as harmful and unattractive, respectively. Consequently, with auspicious sensemaking, the individual views his/her circumstances in a favourable way, focusing on positive issues and considering the environment promising for his/her business. In contrast, in ominous sensemaking, the individual views the circumstances sceptically by placing emphasis on negative issues, being suspicious about positive issues, and by being disinterested in even trying to find opportunities in the context. This mental image-based sensemaking has a strong influence on opportunity recognition – auspicious sensemaking gives fruitful grounds for the individual to recognise opportunities in the context in question, whereas ominous sensemaking is likely to prevent it. Hence, the results of this thesis suggest that mental images and sensemaking have a great impact on the recognition of opportunities in international collaboration contexts. Overall, acknowledging this cognitive, subjective perspective on international opportunity recognition is of great importance in understanding the initiation and progress of business internationalisation.
Besides identifying mental images and sensemaking processes as central elements of collective international opportunity recognition, my analysis suggests
that the recognition of collective international opportunities depends on the recognition of opportunities both in the focal foreign market and in the inter-firm collaboration initiative in question. Moreover, it further reveals that recognising an opportunity either in the foreign market exploration or in inter-firm collaboration may lead the manager to see opportunities in the respective market or cooperative setting. For example, in Article 4, Jonquil’s CEO was largely driven towards Omega collaboration based on his urge to explore the Norwegian market. Trillium, in turn, ended up seeing opportunities in Russia based on the opportunity to join the Sigma group, which provided access to this market that was previously considered as impossible to enter. Nevertheless, to enact a collective international opportunity, an entrepreneur or manager has to see both the market and cooperation simultaneously as adequately promising in order to find the engagement worthy of its costs and trade-offs. Collaboration is not seen as an opportunity if its target market is not promising enough, and vice versa, the target market does not seem promising if there is no collaboration opportunity to lead a firm into the market. The two images are thus distinct but strongly interlinked in collective international opportunity recognition.
This thesis also provides findings that relate to the opportunity concept itself. For instance, while Chandra, Styles, and Wilkinson (2015) focus on actionable entrepreneurial opportunities with the term opportunity sets, this study suggests that of equal, or even higher, importance in international opportunity recognition are the underlying idea sets. Idea sets refer to the stock of entrepreneurial ideas an individual has in his/her memory at a given time (Hill & Birkinshaw 2010), comprising well-developed ideas as well as initial sparks of possibility. I find that these entrepreneurial ideas constitute the necessary basis for the recognition of actionable entrepreneurial opportunities. Furthermore, as the mental image concept depicts, it is not only entrepreneurial ideas but views and interpretations of a broader variety of relevant issues that precede and determine the recognition of concrete business opportunities. In order to understand the internationalisation paths of SMEs, I see no reason to limit the research to the recognition of direct entrepreneurial opportunities but instead suggest taking a more fine-grained approach by also acknowledging the importance of entrepreneurs and managers recognising and acting upon secondary, indirect opportunities, which may lead them to recognise larger opportunities that allow them to actually enter a foreign market (see Article 3). One could even argue the international opportunity is always comprised of small indirect opportunities, such as a change to get involved in a publicly supported internationalisation group, to join a promotion tour abroad, or to employ a new person with international experience and connections, which can bring the SME in front of a concrete internationalisation opportunity. Thus, I argue that focusing only on broad entrepreneurial opportunities may lead
scholars to disregard the recognition and exploitation of minor steps that take SMEs forward, or backward, in internationalisation. While the concept of opportunity as such was not in the focus of this study, considering this aspect might provide us new understanding on SME internationalisation. Alternatively, the discovered emphasis on the perceptions related to potential opportunity contexts may also suggest that, in line with Kitching and Rouse (2017), the concept of opportunity as such is not even of as strong relevance as the recognition of possible steps that an entrepreneur or manager may take at a specific point in time in a specific environment in order to meet his/her and the firm’s then-current objectives. Nevertheless, the context-specific and subjective mental images together with the subjective sensemaking processes that build on mental images allow us to understand the actions of individual entrepreneurs and managers and explain why some and not others see opportunities for them in specific foreign market and collaborative contexts.
These findings also provide researchers food for thought concerning how we understand the recognition of opportunities. For example, the existence and importance of context-specific mental images in opportunity recognition implies that opportunity individuation and evaluation (employing the self) take place not only after the recognition of an opportunity, but instead those elements are involved already in the recognition process as they are rooted in the constituents of the mental images which determine what issues an individual even finds interesting and attractive in his/her surroundings (see Article 2 and Article 3). Thus, opportunity recognition and evaluation not only precede but also overlap with opportunity development, and the image of self is entangled with the image of the opportunity context. At the same time, this study also acknowledges the presence of non-rational elements in entrepreneurial action (cf. Lerner et al. 2018). As entrepreneurs view the world through their mental images that may contain attitudinal and even emotional factors, opportunity recognition is not necessarily based on intended reasoning and evaluation but may be at times based more on ‘gut feelings’ about the context. Moreover, the information on which individuals make sense of their changing circumstances may be more or less limited and biased – they are continuously in the middle of information overload and must make decisions based on the limited information they have on specific events and issues (see Article 2). This in line with Weick (1995), who suggests that sensemaking is driven by plausibility rather than accuracy, which is not necessarily a negative issue – what matters is that the entrepreneur or manager is capable of making sense of his/her situation to the extent that he/she can take actions that he/she believes will take him/her towards the long-term goals. In practice, the emotional and rationally limited considerations and the resulting actions are of equal importance in the firm’s internationalisation path as the entrepreneurs’ subjective
considerations and actions truly determine the firm’s steps forward, the outcomes of which unfold only afterwards (Weick et al. 2005).
All in all, opening the investigation to take into account the context-specific mental images and related sensemaking processes underlying collective international opportunity recognition, and also indicating the importance of non- entrepreneurial indirect opportunities as well as the mixed phases and non- rational aspects of opportunity recognition and exploitation, gives a more realistic and comprehensive approach to understanding what international entrepreneurship is about and how the SME internationalisation processes actually unfold. Consequently, based on the findings of this overall thesis and synthesising the views I have gained along the way, I define the recognition of collective international opportunities as individual entrepreneurs or managers making sense of their emergent circumstances based on mental images of the foreign market and collaboration group in an auspicious way that drives them to see opportunities for themselves in this context – opportunities worth their joint actions integrating their firms into business in this foreign market.