Research Methodology

This study is qualitative in nature, focusing on companies that fit the most common definitions of born globals from the literature (e.g., Knight & Cavusgil, 2004; Melen & Nordman, 2009). The CMIE Prowess database was used to identify companies fitting the criteria of being less than 20 years old, with at least 25 % of revenue from international operations, and internationalized within the first three years after startup, from the textile industry in India, which was chosen as it had more firms that could be defined as born globals (Knight & Cavusgil, 2004). The apparel industry also lent itself to a thorough analysis of the product life-cycle’s influence on internationalization modes, especially given the strong seasonality of the product, along with the long ideation-to-productization cycle, relative to the product selling period. The database was supplemented by the researchers’ own industry contacts for identifying born globals. A total of eight firms responded to the survey, through e-mail and/or interviews. Seven of these firms were younger than 20 years. One of the firms was dropped from the study as it had been operating for too many years. All of the participating firms confirmed that they had obtained at least 25 % of their revenues from foreign customers within three years of beginning their operations. In fact, all of them had almost their complete revenue coming from foreign customers and markets, right from the beginning.