The concept born global firms has gained a spectacular increase in interest from both academic and political circles. Rigorous quantitative treatment of born global firms are however rare in the international business/ economics literature. Implementing unique data on all Swedish start-ups during 1998–۲۰۰۸ in the manufacturing sector, we conclude that born global firms are a very rare event, that their prevalence seems invariant to time, and that they perform similar to other matched “twin” firms with regard to profitability and productivity but report a considerably higher growth in employment and sales. These results are robust to a wider definition of born global firms and to the timing of performance measurements.

Introduction

Natura non facit saltum (nature does not make jumps) was how Alfred Marshall (1920) explained why persistence over time could be observed for most economic variables and processes. Born global firms, a cleverly coined concept introduced in a McKinsey study in the early 1990s, are however claimed to do just that, i.e. adopt global patterns of internationalization from their very inception.1 The concept has gained a spectacular increase in interest from academic and political circles over the last 15–۲۰ years. Yet, the evidence to support a general shift towards a different mode of internationalization for small and young firms is by and large non-existent. A theoretical framework as to why global strategies could be a superior way for start-up firms to rapidly exploit entrepreneurial opportunities has been provided by the international entrepreneurship literature (Etemad & Wright, 2003; Chetty & Campbell-Hunt, 2004; Knight et al., 2004; Oviatt & McDougall, 2005; Rugman & Verbeke 2008; Johanson and Vahlne, 2009; Wan et al., 2011). Moreover, changing organizational, environmental and strategic factors are likely to foster continued internationalization (Zahra & George, 2002), in addition to falling costs related to trade liberalization, dismantling of regulatory barriers and technological progress (Cavusgil & Knight, 2015). Still, solid empirical backing of the alleged extent and performance of born globals is extremely scarce and comparisons with rigorously defined control groups are, to the best of our knowledge, largely neglected. Rather, most of previous empirical analyses in the born global literature primarily relies on either qualitative case-based studies or survey data drawing on a relatively limited number of observations (Gabrielsson et al., 2008; Kuuvalainen et al., 2012). These methodologies have their respective merits, however, they are not an accurate tool to shed light on the pervasiveness of large-scale internationalization by young firms, nor whether their performance is superior as compared to other similar firms. The results of previous contributions also vary depending on methods and time periods considered. In a recent review of the literature, Zander et al. (2015) stressed that there is a gap in the empirical research on born global firms that remains to be filled.2 Some notable exceptions are studies by Sleuwaegen & Onkelinx, 2014; Sui and Baum (2014) and Choquette et al. (2017). Just like these contributions we apply a longitudinal empirical model. Even though there are adjacent issues addressed in those studies, their research design is different as are the specific research questions posed.