Transnational Entrepreneurship: A New Perspective on a Cooperative Approach towards Cross-border Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Cross-border cooperation in the early stages of a start-up might be one way of developing a sustainable and scalable business model for young enterprises. Thus, this paper is anchored at the intersection of the research areas of international Entrepreneurship and business model innovation. Its intention is to open up diverse perspectives for researchers in the field of cross-border Entrepreneurship. For this complex approach of cross-national cooperation, a theoretical framework with helpful knowledge has been developed. This work is considered relevant in view of the possible future developments in the fields of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Global developments, such as the rapid growth of digitization, have a strong impact on the global economic situation as well as the field of Entrepreneurship (Kollmann et al. 2017). While on the one hand many people in Europe fear falling behind China and the USA when it comes to innovation, the associated potential for new, globally applicable business models is often neglected even though start-ups might have the courage to address them. However, they usually lack the resources and market access they need to implement their objectives. Therefore, this paper offers a new perspective on Transnational Entrepreneurship (TE) and demonstrates an approach for a cooperative possibility, how young companies can successfully discover cross-border market opportunities together with other start-ups and implement new business models successfully, providing a new perspective and first practical implications from action research-based pilot projects for Transnational Entrepreneurship. Furthermore, first practical implications were implemented through a university project in the challenging environment of resource constraints and cross-border communication. Keywords: transnational, entrepreneurship, cooperation, business model,