eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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Purpose - The rise of e-commerce and software startup companies have significantly changed the Internet and business playground. HVO Finland Oy is a young startup company, operating in software industry providing a health care site for manual therapy businesses. The purpose of this paper is to investigate internationalization as a concept analyzing different theories and to investigate a case company HVO internally and externally. The theoretical framework studies several common theories in an early startup perspective, representing stage theories, international entrepreneurship and external environment using Porter's 5forces theory. The main purpose is the fact that we are emphasizing the importance of analysing the company itself. All internationalization is based on transferring a working concept to another country and the basis of this is in the working concept. As the company operates in the Finnish market the comparison is done with the US market and the Finnish market honouring the company's interests

Design/methodology/approach - Data is done qualitatively through open and semi structured interview, which was conducted to HVO Finland Oy Chairman of the Board. A 3rd party consultant work was distributed and utilized by the researchers in the internal study of the company. A proposed research models were investigated through secondary research using theories that ignore and notice the role of the entrepreneur especially in the early stage start-up company.

Findings - The empirical research shows that the common stage models do not support the study of an early startup company. The main academic value comes from the more precise view of this second part in internationalization Model for Software companies. The end result is that the company is, despite of its micro size and young age, well equipped for internationalization phase. As the company's idea can be described as "born global" it is clear that the true potential lies abroad.

Research limitations/implications - There are some limitations that the research paper uses. The questionnaire data is provided from one key executive from the company. The research findings have significant implications for the practicing managers, and thus it is not generable with any further context.

Originality / Value - The research has a contribution with literature of internationalization and early stage startup case HVO. The study is a research paper with introducing different internationalization theories and providing a case study with the HVO Finland Oy company investigation.

Keywords - Entrepreneurship, Internationalization, startup, Software Company, HVO Finland Oy, Micro Enterprise, Born Global.

Paper type: Case Study