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BOT (Build- Operate-Transfer) projects are well known to sponsors and contractors of mega infrastructure projects around the world. The massive scale and long-term time frame of these construction projects require non-traditional business relationships among the sponsors, prime contractors, sub-contractors, and a host of other vendors. The BOT model is typically sought by local and national governments that cannot independently finance complex mega projects.A BOT deal refers to a large-scale project where the sponsor (typically a governmental agency) contracts with a prime contractor, that assumes the responsibility for completing the construction and operating it for a predetermined period, before turning ownership back over to the sponsor. During this predetermined period, the contractor can recoup its investment through its operations and/or through a guaranteed rate of return from the sponsor.This paper reports on such a project - the case of Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge, the third bridge linking Asia and Europe in Istanbul, a sprawling metropolis of roughly 15 million people. The bid also called for the construction of the connecting highways. It was initiated in 2012 and was completed in 2016. Named after a celebrated Ottoman Sultan, the bridge is widely acknowledged to address a much-needed infrastructure project for Istanbul.We detail BOT projects - rarely discussed in the IB literature - as a hybrid mode of international market entry, with unique features, benefits, and risks. The insights offered in this manuscript were gathered from a series of unstructured interviews with senior executives of the prime contractors. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

In the international business-to-business (B2B) setting, a firm's salespeople often have more direct, prolonged, and intimate contact with the customer and market environments than any other employees of the firm. In fact, for customers in many B2B markets, the salesperson is the face of the firm. The sales function can be characterized as an inherently entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurship is founded on knowing or seeing something others do not see, and the sales force has long been recognized as an important source of knowledge about a firm's customers and environment. However, there has been relatively little work linking entrepreneurship to international sales performance, especially in the B2B context.This paper focuses on the intelligence-gathering role of salespeople to firms practicing corporate entrepreneurship in the international B2B setting. More specifically, drawing on the theories of corporate entrepreneurship and the knowledge-based view of the firm, the authors develop a conceptual model that proposes international sales performance for firms practicing corporate entrepreneurship will be enhanced when salespeople practice customer-oriented selling and the firm's absorptive capacity is stronger. Recommended methodology for testing the proposed model is a single-informant survey of sales managers with firms in the domain of interest, using structural equation modeling with moderator tests. The paper concludes with implications and directions for future research. Refereed/Peer-reviewed