External knowledge acquisition represents a precondition for firms’ competitive advantage. However, young firms find it particularly difficult to gain access to external sources of knowledge: young firms suffer from a liability of newness by exhibiting significantly lower propensities to...

Drawing on social capital theory and the international business literature, we argue that domestic geography, in terms of localized potential social capital, facilitates individual firms’ awareness of business opportunities, including knowledge related to involvement in the foreign markets for...

The paper is an analysis of Balassa’s ‘revealed comparative advantage’ (RCA). The papers shows that when using the RCA, it should always be adjusted in such a way, so that it becomes symmetric. The conclusion is based on a theoretical discussion of the properties of the measure, but also...

Several researchers looking at the development of international export specialisation patterns have shown that there is a general tendency for OECD countries to de-specialise. This finding is in contrast to findings made by other authors, working on technological specialisation. These authors...

This paper introduces a model of knowledge sharing of lead users located in a public and unrestricted community of users. While existing literature on knowledge sharing focuses on allocation and collaboration processes inside or among companies we extend this to the community level. We then...