Overcome management bias and win the globalisation and innovation races: a four-step international expansion strategy

With shorter product cycles, firms need to improve their innovation capacity and spread rapidly their innovations abroad before they are imitated or superseded. But when expanding internationally, managers often frame their decisions narrowly, leading to overconfidence and optimism in their market entries. This management bias often leads firms into less attractive markets with large inflexible investments that limit learning and innovation. To overcome this management bias, the article advances a Four-Step Strategy to achieve broad, rapid, deep, and innovative international expansion.