Rapid Internationalization of Traditional SMEs: Between Stage Models and Born Globals

In the last 15 years, several traditional Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have rapidly internationalized operations in psychic distant countries with limited market knowledge, limited use of networks, and limited international experience of the entrepreneurs. The overall purpose of this paper is to draw research attention to this internationalization phenomenon that we call Production-Oriented Internationalization (POI) of traditional SMEs. We describe the peculiar path followed by SMEs during POI by analyzing five case firms from Italy, and show that the leading literature does not contemplate it. We argue that traditional SMEs are able to speed up their internationalization process (from gradual to rapid) thus, becoming actual international players. Given the high relevance of the traditional SMEs in many national economies (e.g. Italy, Spain, Portugal, Denmark), it is interesting to study how these firms can catch up rapidly with the increasing global competition.