An international new venture’s commercialization of a medical technology innovation : The role of institutional healthcare settings

• Purpose: This paper explores how different cross-country institutional healthcare settings affect an international new venture’s selling strategies and internationalization processes when commercializing a medical technology innovation.Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on a longitudinal indepth case study approach with a comparative healthcare analysis in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States.Findings: An institutional framework helps elucidate the regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive dimensions in different healthcare settings. National markets differ when operating in a healthcare setting and thus affectboth sales patterns and the internationalization process. In this study, four different sales patterns emerged from the countries’ and even regions’ distinctive institutional differences. This complexity and diversity led to a focused and slow internationalization process, which contradicts the assumption of rapid internationalization proposed in international entrepreneurship literature.Practical implications: Every nation has its own unique healthcare structure, indicating the importance of choosing markets that facilitate a swift uptake of a specific breakthrough innovation. It is a lengthy, complex and costly process to commercialize a breakthrough innovation in cross-country healthcare settings, especially if new behaviors and routines need to be created.Originality/value: The paper contributes to international entrepreneurship literature by developing a contextualized internationalization model and by advancing six propositions related to the role of institutional healthcare settings and their impact on international new ventures’ sales patterns and internationalization processes.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

International new ventures

International entrepreneurship

Process theory of internationalization

Institutional theories

Innovation

Healthcare settings

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