Do technology-focused fast internationalizers’ performance measures change as they mature?

Abstract

We examine how technology-focused innovation-based fast internationalizers’ (TIFIs’) performance measures change as they mature. Based on 42 interviews with Australian entrepreneurs and industry experts, we show that young TIFIs employ exploratory strategies for developing cutting-edge solutions and prefer using subjective measures for assessing their export performance. Later, becoming more complex organizations, employing exploitative strategies, they use additional objective, profit-based measures. The implications of destructive forces (e.g., COVID-19) to the performance of these firms were modest. Due to being digitally-based industry disruptors, they remain focused on innovation as the source of their independence and survival. Their creativity drives constant change/disruption to industries, requiring back-and-forth movement among exploratory and exploitative strategies, integrating subjective and objective performance measure simultaneously, as their new-to-the-world solutions are developed to withhold ‘creative destruction’ over time.