Opportunity distance rather than psychic distance in entrepreneurial firm internationalisation

Extending recent opposition to “psychic distance” as a summary indicator of firm internationalisation, this paper argues that while “psychic distance” affects internationalisation decisions it fails to explain how internationalisation decisions are made by firms in a globalising world today, particularly entrepreneurial technology firms which often internationalise early. It draws from the opportunity paradigm in entrepreneurship literature and posits that entrepreneurial internationalisation decisions are primarily driven by opportunity perception of the entrepreneur. With illustrative data from eight entrepreneurs in the technology space, the paper argues that opportunity perception and psychic distance perception are individual level perceptions of the entrepreneur that combine to determine internationalisation action/intention decisions. This theory building paper proposes “opportunity distance” as a combination metric to explicate entrepreneurial firm internationalisation better.