Transnational experience and high-performing entrepreneurs in emerging economies: evidence from Vietnam

Robyn Klingler-Vidra, Ba Linh Tran and Adam William Chalmers

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Do high-performing entrepreneurs in the technology sector in emerging economies have more, or different, transnational experience than the founders of high-performing non-technology businesses? Employing Vietnam as a case study, we find that they do; the founders of high-performing technology-oriented businesses are 15 times more likely to have transnational experience in the U.S. compared to their non-technology peers, and are 35 times more likely to be graduates of American universities compared to founders of high-performing, non-technology-oriented business. The founders of high-performing non-technology businesses are more ‘place-based’, as they have predominantly lived and studied in Vietnam. Our data and methods are comprised of a logistic regression analysis of the biographical details of Vietnam's 143 highest-performing entrepreneurs; the founders of the 76 Vietnam's (non-technology-based) companies with the highest market capitalizations and the 67 founders of Vietnam's highest performing technology-oriented companies, in terms of private equity fundraising, as of April 2020. The paper's theoretical contribution is the advance it makes in analytical explanations of why technology-based entrepreneurs have more transnational experience, especially in the U.S., than high-performing founders of businesses in other sectors; this helps extend theory on the relationship between social and human capital and entrepreneurial performance, specifically in the technology sector.

Keywords: entrepreneurship; innovation; returnees; social capital; transnational experience; Vietnam (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 11 pages
Date: 2021-08-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-sbm, nep-sea and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published in Technology in Society, 1, August, 2021, 66. ISSN: 0160-791X

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:110756

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