Beyond the Conventional Argonauts Explanations: Exploring thr Relevancy of Transnational Entrepreneurial Innovators

The last 10-15 years have witnessed a surge of interest in high-tech transnational entrepreneurship. The research has especially been spurred by the centrality of Indians and Chinese in Silicon Valley as the overlooked innovators. Special attention has been paid to how they used their bifocal professional and cultural experiences and their network in their home and host country to start up new firms in their home country. Following Schumpeter (1942) these firms are pr definition the outcome of innovative activities as the bifocality (Honig et al. 2010) of the transnational entrepreneurs allows for novel types of resource combinations and thus new products (i.e. new to the firm and market) and possible new organizational forms (e.g. double location sourcing). The centrality of transnational entrepreneurs within the ICT industry has been thoroughly documented in the US, Taiwan, China and India – and to some extent also in Israel and Ireland (Saxenian 2006, Arora and Gambardella 2005, Vang and Overby, 2006). Saxenian has coined these ICT-based transnational entrepreneurs as Argonauts.