ABSTRACT

This chapter looks at venturing behavior in international firms at a host country level, but with a specific focus on the foreign subsidiary's use of external resources and capabilities in order to pursue venturing. It discusses the subsidiary's managers under the spotlight. The assets that are most relevant to venturing are outside of the boundaries of the firm. However, these assets are accessible to the foreign subsidiary because of the subsidiary's embeddedness – or degree of closeness — with external organizations that possess them. The chapter also discusses that venturing arises because of a role for subsidiary managers in recognizing, assessing and pursuing opportunity through embeddedness of the subsidiary within inter-organizational networks; and the possibility of using external actors in host countries around the world to share knowledge of problems and market needs, as well as resources that may be combined to form potential solutions.