Search

This paper explores the emergence of direct linkages between the international economy and the state government of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. In the early 1990s Baden-Württemberg embarked on a plan in which the laender government took the lead in organizing a large-scale, high technology project for the development of interactive television. Creating a 'network' between itself and major economic actors the laender government sought to enhance the economic development of the region. However, as the economic actors involved in the project questioned the economic viability of interactive television, they began to withdraw from the project. The project's failure demonstrates the incompatibility of political objectives with the economic goals of actors in a globalized economy. We conclude that as attractive as the network approach may be for regional and national governments, it is likely to be successful only where both sets of actors see the outcome as enhancing their respective priorities (political legitimacy and economic gains). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there were a lot of new studies about the phenomenon of internationalization in the past several years, the field of newly founded technology-based firms ( NTBFs) internationalization was less considered in literature. We contributed in filling this research gap using a longitudinal study to discover the determinants of internationalization in Germany. Our sample was based on 116 venture capital-financed NTBFs; 44 of them went international. Given the high dependence on exports of the German economy, the internationalization behavior of its NTBFs is of great importance for the future macroeconomic development of the country. In comparison, there are still very few empirical studies on the key determinants and initial drivers for the rapid internationalization of German start-ups. We showed that technological and financial factors are positively related to going global. The characteristics of the human capital, however, have no significance for going international in our sample. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]