Summary highlights

Contributions: This article provides insights into the overall state of the IEO literature by examining gaps, themes, and trends in IEO research based on reviewing articles published from 2005 to 2019. Our contributions to the international entrepreneurial opportunity literature can be summarized in three related steps. Firstly, this field’s authoritative and significant articles were selected and categorized through the inclusion criteria process. In the next step, the current state of IEO studies was found, and in the last step, based on these findings, the paths of future studies were recommended for researchers in this field.

Research Questions/Purpose: The primary purpose of this article is to answer the following questions: Which topics have been considered in IEO literature from 2005 to 2019? What has been the thematic classification of studies in the past? What have been the trends in past studies over time? What is the current state of the art in the field of IEO? Which gaps still exist in the IEO literature that could be future research agendas in this field?

Methodology and Data Information: This article used a systematic review process and a meta-synthesis method to achieve the research goal. The Scopus database was selected to find the studies, and the total number of reviewed articles was 107 English-language articles from 58 peer-reviewed journals. The process of reviewing IEO articles consists of four steps: data collection, data evaluation, analysis and synthesis, and presentation of findings.

Results/Findings: Based on the analysis of quantitative data, firstly, we presented a summary of quantitative conclusions as follows: statistical frequency of research conducted in IEO in terms of article growth trend, research subject area, the method used in articles, regional and continental distribution, the industry in which the research was conducted, firm size, entrepreneurial opportunity dimensions. In analyzing qualitative data, we synthesize the purpose and focus of prior research based on the interpretive synthesizing approach. Then, we presented it in a table to provide an overview of the IEO research objectives.

Limitations: Although our research team did their best to provide a comprehensive overview of IEO studies, it should be noted that our paper is not without limits. In the process of selecting previous research, we set criteria to ensure that the quality of studies is at the highest level, so we omitted books, book chapters, and conference publications. On the other hand, we excluded studies conducted in languages other than English from our scope of the study.

Theoretical Implications and Recommendations: In the past, numerous studies have been conducted in IEO literature. Hence, a comprehensive review of the IEO literature was essential to determine the boundaries of knowledge and existing gaps in this area. To achieve a comprehensive trend analysis of the previous research process, we recognized the prominent factors from the prior articles’ concepts. Therefore, with this insight, future studies on IEO can be efficiently oriented.

Practical Implications and Recommendations: According to the conceptual frameworks presented in the article, scholars, managers of entrepreneurial firms, and entrepreneurs can be acquainted with the principal factors considered in the IEO studies. Furthermore, this insight can substantially influence decision-making, patterns, and path opting. On the other hand, it can help governments and policymakers move in more effective and new ways that may have received less attention previously.

Future Research Directions: This article presented IEO’s future research agenda schematically based on concepts and issues that have been less considered or generally overlooked in previous studies.

Introduction

In the traditional entrepreneurship literature, recognizing and pursuing opportunities have often been defined as a vital part of the entrepreneurial process (Busenitz et al. 2014; George et al. 2014; Kontinen and Ojala 2011; Harms et al. 2009); thus, opportunities are at the heart of entrepreneurship (Stevenson and Gumpert 1985). An opportunity has been a “dominant thread” in entrepreneurship studies (Venkataraman et al. 2012). Entrepreneurial opportunity (EO) has been growing in years, widely discussed and considered in recent decades in entrepreneurship articles, and will be the most critical topic in the field of entrepreneurship (Busenitz et al. 2014). However, according to Shane, there is a belief that there is no entrepreneurship without opportunity, which indicates the high importance of the role of opportunity in entrepreneurship (Shane 2000) but nowadays, considering international businesses, we get to the point that along with opportunity, innovation, potential global markets for large companies, resource gaining power through corporate size, political power, economical power, etc., each plays an important role in shaping international entrepreneurship.

Shane’s approach indicates that recognizing and pursuing opportunities make a difference between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs (Shane 2000).

Entrepreneurial opportunities are not limited to local and domestic markets, so these opportunities exist both in the domestic and overseas markets (Zahra et al. 2005).

Given the multi-domestic strategy, which is an international marketing approach, companies have been established to significantly reduce the possibility of failure in international markets by adapting their domestic mindsets to international industry environments and cultures (Nadkarni et al. 2011). Restrictions on the expansion of domestic markets and, on the other hand, the existence of opportunities and competitive advantages in global markets have made senior managers of these industries strengthen local responsiveness by differentiating foreign strategies and responding to the specific needs of each overseas market (Kobrin 1991; Roth and Morrison 1992; Suárez-Ortega and Álamo-Vera 2005).

There are several methods for internationalization of enterprises, one of the most popular of which is export; due to its low commitment to organizational resources, it can lead to organizational flexibility and preferable strategy. Additionally, it is always supported and encouraged by governments (Miocevic and Morgan 2018).

There are diverse perspectives on the export propensity and the expansion of foreign markets, including the resource-based view, the network ties theory (Nguyen and Viet Le 2019) or organizational learning processes, and several other approaches, all of which focus on functional capabilities as competitive advantages for the success of enterprises in export (Miocevic and Morgan 2018).

International marketing studies have sought to reveal how entrepreneurial firms succeed in growing exports and expanding their foreign markets and concluded that the exporting growth of more entrepreneurial companies depends on the interplay between the exploration and exploitation of international entrepreneurial opportunities (IEOs) and export competitive advantages (Miocevic and Morgan 2018).

On the other hand, a study on international entrepreneurship emerged in the early 1990s as a response to the firms that had used traditional internationalization patterns for newly internationalizing firms (Oviatt and McDougall 1994; McDougall et al. 1994), and IE has been conceptualized as an IEO-focused activity with a cross-border perspective.

International entrepreneurship was described as “a process of creatively discovering and exploiting opportunities that exist outside a firm’s domestic markets in the pursuit of competitive advantage” (Zahra and George 2002) and later defined as “… the discovery, enactment, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities across national borders, to create goods and services” (Oviatt and McDougall 2005).

Although the core concept of IEO-based activities is to enter foreign markets, yet identifying skilled personnel, investment opportunities, and market intelligence information, each plays a central role in these activities (Mostafiz and Goh 2018).

Due to the critical role of international entrepreneurial opportunities in international entrepreneurship, rapidly growing studies on IE and IEO, and the existence of authentic research in this field, which has been done in recent decades, this study was targeted to systematically review and synthesize findings on IEO-based research. An overview of the literature based on a systematic review over a certain long period can play an essential role in scientific advancement.

The article of Zahra et al. (2005) has laid a principal foundation stone whose primary purpose was to investigate how entrepreneurs recognize and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities in abroad markets by applying a cognitive perspective.

Based on prior studies on IEO, this study reviews 107 articles from 2005 to early 2019. This study is structured as follows. The first section describes the theoretical background of IE and IEO, after that in the second section, we describe the methodology of this paper, and in the third section, contents of IEO research are analyzed in terms of thematic area, regional distribution, industry, firm size, firm age, opportunity dimension, methodology, purpose, and focus of prior articles. In this article, the obtained information is categorized and synthesized to achieve the state of the art in the IEO field. Finally, we discuss and interpret our findings, demonstrate the interests in IEO prior studies, and identify research gaps for future research.

Theoretical background

IE theoretical background

Although international entrepreneurship has already been proposed and discussed, the first empirical research on internationalization and IE belongs to McDougall (1989). She works on new venture sales in the new international market, and for the first time, she defined IE as “The development of international new ventures or start-ups that from their inception, engage in international business, thus viewing their operating domain as international form the initial stages of the firm’s operation.”

The nature of IE in the initial definition was that IE concentrated on new ventures or born firms with an international approach. Since then, IE has been defined and considered an internationalization process in a new venture, born global, and start-ups.

In order to evolve the definition of IE, Zahra propounded IE as “The study of the nature and consequences of a firm’s risk-taking behavior as it ventures into the international market.” According to this definition, the concept of IE is based on the entrepreneurship theory and entrepreneurial attitudes toward the internationalization of either established firms or new ventures (Zahra 1993).

After that, the definition of IE was revised and improved from 1996 to 2003. Entrepreneurial attitude and behavior were considered to internationalization progress, and the importance of firms’ fundamental characteristics such as age and size were ignored.

“New and innovative activities that have the goal of value creation and growth in the business organization across the nation” (McDougall and Oviatt 1996)

“A combination of innovative, proactive, and risk-seeking behavior that crosses or is compared across national borders and is intended to create value in business organizations.” (McDougall and Oviatt 2000)

“International entrepreneurship is the discovery, enactment, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities across national borders- to create future goods and services.” (McDougall et al. 2003)

The international business theory is rooted in Smith’s theories and classical economic thought, which describes the behavior of large multinational corporations. On the other hand, small entrepreneurship companies play a significant role in global trade. Due to the pressure of globalization, they were pushed to global markets to ensure their survival. Although the theory of international business is based on the logic, situations, and specific motives of globalization, the emerging international entrepreneurship theory helps to figure out how international trade occurs without any restrictions on the size of firms.

Several theoretical approaches that continue in parallel have been progressed to comprehend how international trade takes place. In other words, the convergence point of these theories and approaches is the theory of international entrepreneurship (Mtigwe 2006).

Classical theories

Absolute advantage theory

The oldest and most well-known international business theory is the theory of absolute advantage that its main approach is maximizing national profits. This theory is based on the classical economic view and was proposed by Smith in 1776 (Smith 1776). According to this view, globalization is based on a national level, and the globalization behavior of companies is interpreted based on maximizing national profits.

Comparative advantage theory

After absolute advantage theory, Ricardo in 1817 suggested the theory of comparative advantage to modify Smith’s (1776) theory. The main idea of this theory is that if a country has a comparative advantage in producing one product over another, it must produce and export the product that has the comparative advantage and import the product that has the comparative loss (Ricardo 1817).

Hecksher-Ohlin factor proportion theory

In 1933, Hecksher and Ohlin propounded their opinion to refine Ricardo’s (1817) theory. Based on this view, trade occurs when countries produce goods with a price advantage and exchange them for productions with a price disadvantage (Hecksher and Ohlin 1933).

Early market imperfections (EMI) theories

Foreign direct investment theory

The first theory in early market imperfections is foreign direct investment (FDI) theory, that Hymer in 1960 accomplished his doctoral dissertation on the foreign direct investment behaviors of multinational corporations, and this achievement provided a solid foundation for future FDI research. FDA scholars cited the main reasons for the market imperfections in factors such as exchange rate imbalances, scant foreign demand for firm’s production, inadequate government support for globalization, and failure in foreign markets due to incapability to transfer technical knowledge (Calvet 1981).

International product life cycle theory

After FDA theory, in the early 1960 and 1961, international product life cycle theory was propounded by Posner, and Vernon developed it in 1966 and Wells in 1968. Given the perspective of the product life cycle in international trade, companies move between different locations to ensure and maintain their cost advantage. According to this theory, the main country has a comparative advantage in producing certain goods, but product standardization for producers may eliminate the cost advantage (Sundaram and Black 1995).

Latter day market imperfections (LDMI) theories

International portfolio theory

The first theory in LDMI class is international portfolio theory, which is a development of FDI theories referred to as diversification theory and financial theory. According to this theory, companies invest in international trade to maximize profitability and avoid domestic economic risks (Rugman and Verbeke 1992).

Internalization theory

The main weakness of product life cycle theory is that it is ambiguous in terms of the agreement on different methods of entering the foreign market, joint venture, foreign direct investment, and schedule mode switches.

The next theory in this group is the internalization theory that is an expansion of the international product life cycle theory (Globerman 1986).

Eclectic theory

Based on Dunning’s research in 1977, the eclectic theory of international production was formed and thus acknowledged that global business occurs if a corporation has three advantages: specific ownership benefits, globalization advantages, location-specific benefits.

Internationalization theories

Incremental internationalization theory

This theory studies the firm internationalization process based on the establishment chain school, the Uppsala-model, the U-model, the Nordic school, the incremental school, or the stages model. FDA studies and economic theory impressed incremental theory, which Johanson and Wiedersheim-Paul developed in 1975 in their research on Swedish firm internationalization (Johanson and Wiedersheim-Paul 1975).

Network theory

A firm’s networks can be one of the worthful elements for increasing internationalization speed and is considered a source of information and knowledge to gain competitive advantage (Chetty and Campbell-Hunt 2004).

International entrepreneurship theory

The concept of international entrepreneurship theory is an integral part of two incremental and network theories. The incremental theory focuses primarily on large multinational firms that have a steady advance in international markets. The network theory focuses on small and affiliated companies that are rapidly becoming internationalized.

The process of former theories that led to the emergence of international entrepreneurship theory is illustrated (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
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The emergence of IE theory and the year theories were presented

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The most impressive theories conducting international entrepreneurship studies are resource-based theory, knowledge-based theory, dynamic capabilities theory, network theory, social capital theory, marketing theory, and value creation (Peiris et al. 2012).

IEO theoretical background

In the field of entrepreneurship, opportunity is defined as a critical aspect of the entrepreneurial process. Based on this view, Shane and Venkataraman proffer that entrepreneurship research addresses three key questions: The first mode is why, when, and how do opportunities for the creation of goods and services come into existence? The second mode is why, when, and how do some people and not others discover and exploit these opportunities? At last, the third mode is why, when, and how are different modes of action used to exploit entrepreneurial opportunities? (Shane and Venkataraman 2000). Based on Shane and Venkataraman’s three proffered questions, international entrepreneurship researchers have focused on discovering, framing, and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities across international borders (Ellis 2008).

One of the critical concepts in IE studies is entrepreneurial opportunities. In this regard, one of the conceptual definitions of the EO is “situations in which new goods, services, raw materials, markets, and organizing methods can be introduced through the formation of new means, ends, or means-ends relationship” that is proposed by Eckhardt and Shane (2003).

Another conceptual definition of EO is “a set of ideas, beliefs, and actions that enable the creation of future goods and services in the absence of current markets for them.” that is presented by Sarasvathy et al. (2003).

The definition of entrepreneurship based on EO, by Stevenson and Jarillo (1990), has been broadly supported in research (Brown et al. 2001). This view of entrepreneurship was similar to the Austrian economic school view on entrepreneurial activity. They both believed the nature of entrepreneurship was based on opportunity exploration, evaluation, and exploitation via a combination of new resources (Kirzner 1973; Schumpeter 1975).

Opportunities exist in international markets, and there is no limitation of opportunity in terms of boundaries. Recognizing EO in foreign markets can profit from networks, information, knowledge, and experience (Zahra and Dess 2001). In IE’s view, IEO must be discovered, evaluated, and exploited in international markets (Ellis 2008). Therefore, IEO is accepted as an undeniable factor in the internationalization processes and firms’ international behavior (Chandra et al. 2009; Ellis 2008; Johanson and Vahlne 2006; Zahra et al. 2005).

IEO is defined as “The chance to conduct exchange with new foreign partners” (Ellis 2008). He also emphasized that these opportunities are worthful when they lead to the emergence of new international exchanges, which also involve the risk of entrepreneurial activities. Exchange can be done with customers, distributors, licensors, franchisees, contract manufacturers, joint venture partners, and others (Ellis 2008).

Zahra et al. (2005) defined international opportunity (IO) recognition as an iterative process whereby the entrepreneurs revise their concepts several times based on intuition, formal and informal feedback, and the results of errors and experiments. These revisions depend on entrepreneurial cognitions. After recognizing the opportunities through these revisions, entrepreneurs consider paths to take advantage of these opportunities. It is noteworthy that identifying opportunities and selecting them through the revisions are directly related to the exploitation methods. They also emphasize that entrepreneurs make their foreign market entry decisions by utilizing both rational and irrational elements.

Methodology

As opposed to a heuristic process, a systematic review method profits from an explicit algorithm to search and critically evaluate the literature. Although systematic reviews, using a transparent and reproducible procedure, improve the quality of the review process and the result (Tranfield et al. 2003), this methodology is not without challenges such as the difficulty of data synthesis from various disciplines, insufficient representation of journals, and large amounts of context to review (Pittaway et al. 2004). Systematization enhancement is necessary for the current research, so a systematic review method is suitable for achieving the research goal (Crossan and Apaydin 2010; Denyer and Tranfield 2009).

Generally, the review process consists of four steps: data collection, data evaluation, analysis and synthesis, and presentation of the findings. The scientific contemplation in conducting each of these steps is principal for a quality review (Crossan and Apaydin 2010). A systematic review process is shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2
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A systematic review process

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Data collection

At the outset, the conceptual domain of the study is defined. We established the conceptual domain based on Short et al.’s (2010) literature review of EO and definition of IEO that was propounded by Zahra and George (2002) and Oviatt and McDougall (2005). These comprehensive definitions allowed us to cover a wide range of articles related to various types of IEO.

The Scopus database has the most comprehensive coverage of published research. It includes published articles from EBSCO Information Services, Thompson Reuters Web of Science, ABI/Inform, and similar search engines (Omorede et al. 2014). Because of the high volume of papers, the Scopus database was selected to cover all the significant contributions related to international entrepreneurial opportunities.

First, the following keywords in title, keywords, or abstracts of papers were used as criteria for inclusion: (entrepreneur* opportunit*, entrepreneurial opportunity, opportunity recognition, opportunity identification, opportunity discovery, opportunity creation, opportunity evaluation, opportunity assessment, opportunity exploitation, opportunity Pursuing) AND (multinational*, international*, global*, foreign*) AND (market*, firm*, *compan* *enterpris*, sme*, ventur*, business*). These keywords were deliberately widespread to search and produce a significant number of articles, even if a large number of papers were not related to the current research.

Second, we searched by going through all the journals that published two or more articles on IEO studies during the last decade. These journals were the following: Journal of International Entrepreneurship, International Business Review, International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Journal of World Business, Journal of Teaching in International Business, Journal of International Marketing, International Marketing Review, Entrepreneurial Business and Economics Review, European Business Review, International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Small Business Management, Small Business Economics, Thunderbird International Business Review.

Finally, articles were limited to the subject areas of business, management and accounting, social science, and economics, where the primary topic of interest was related to IEO.

Books, unpublished articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, and other no refereed publications were excluded since journal publications have the highest impact on the management, the business, and the entrepreneurship fields and are considered validated knowledge (Tahai and Meyer 1999; Podsakoff et al. 2005).

The selected journals and articles were not limited to top journals in entrepreneurship, international business, management, marketing, and strategic management. Instead, the selective articles are based on the research aim, which is to select the theoretical, empirical, and conceptual contributions that have added value to the IEO field. The admission criteria are indicated in Table 1.

Table 1 The admission criteria
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Data evaluation

The identified articles in the previous step must be evaluated based on Denyer and Tranfield’s (2009) defined process. First, the articles were classified into three research areas: EO, IO, and IE articles; then, the titles of the articles were reviewed, and articles that were counted more than once were omitted. After that, the abstracts of articles were reviewed, and those irrelevant to international business and international entrepreneurship with opportunity approaches were analyzed. The papers that did not contain any outcome on the IEO were excluded. Finally, we confined the scope of the analysis to a group of 107 English language articles in (2005–2019) (see References marked with an asterisk).

Analysis and synthesis

In a systematic review based on an interpretive synthesizing approach (Noblit and Hare 1988), validation is rooted mainly in reliability and credibility (Julien 2008).

In this study, for synthesizing factual data, we used transparent processes to be reliable. For credibility, multiple evaluation methods have been applied; this means that all the contributing authors evaluated their findings independently. These appraisements were compared and discussed in several negotiations to agree on the analysis and synthesis criteria (Gast et al. 2017).

According to the research methodology, after collecting and evaluating the data, the content of the relevant articles was analyzed and synthesized. Both thematic and content analyses (Weed 2008) were used for extracting the quantitative (frequency) as well as qualitative (value explaining) data aspects.

Each article was coded and categorized systematically for preparing a summary table that includes author, topic, year, journal, thematic area, regional distribution, industry, firm characteristics, entrepreneurial opportunity dimension, methodology, and research purpose to interpret data.

Finding presentation

The presentation of findings is the final step of the systematic review. In the current paper, our findings are presented to help propose new directions for future research on international entrepreneurship opportunities.

Summary of quantitative findings

According to the research methodology, in the final step, we presented our findings, consisting of 107 articles from 58 peer-reviewed journals between 2005 and early 2019. This wide range of journals in various fields, such as management, entrepreneurship, business, economic, social science, engineering, and other fields, indicates a strong desire to study IEO.

Since 2005, the literature of IEO has been expanded (Mainela et al. 2018) by considering several theoretical perspectives, scientific meticulousness, purifying, and the expansion of conceptual bases to achieve the current state (see Fig. 3, number of articles per three years). Thus, we started our review with Zahra et al.’s (2005) article according to the selected timeframe.

Fig. 3
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The growth trend of articles

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The journals and the year of the reviewed articles are demonstrated (see Table 2). After reviewing 107 articles, the most studies were in business journals, followed by, in the order of more to less, studies in entrepreneurship journals, studies in general management, strategic management, and marketing journals, studies in economics, and studies in social science and other related fields (see Fig. 4).

Table 2 Representation of IEO articles in journals
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Fig. 4
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Research subject area

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Summary of the used methods in the articles

The research methodology is defined as “the general approach the researcher takes in carrying out the research project” by Leedy and Ormrod (2001). The three most common methods for conducting research are quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods (see Table 3).

Table 3 Frequency of methodology used in articles
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After reviewing the articles, their methodology was categorized. The findings indicated that the highest contribution to the qualitative papers’ group was related to case study research (35 articles), followed by content analysis research (12 articles), studies based on interviews (6 articles), focus group studies (6 articles), grounded theory and theory development research (5 articles), and ethnographic studies (4 articles).

The most used method in the quantitative papers’ group was descriptive and survey research (each with ten articles), followed by the research that used a casual comparative approach (with seven articles).

Among the mixed method articles, the studies based on the interview approach have the most quantity.

Regional distribution

Regarding regional distribution, studies clearly show that IEO research is conducted around the world. The USA, with 23 articles, has the highest research among the countries. According to the division of territories, the European region has the largest share in IEO studies (see Fig. 5), more precisely the UK with 18 articles; Sweden with 15 articles; Finland with 12 articles; Denmark with eight articles; Spain with six articles; Italy with five articles; Norway with four articles; Germany with three articles; Ireland, Liechtenstein, and the Netherlands with two articles; and Greece, Latvia, and Poland with one article, which have had a high impact on IEO studies.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Continental distribution

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Among the reviewed papers, 32 papers have been researched in several countries and have contributed significantly to the progress of studies (see Table 4).

Table 4 Multi-country IEO research
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As the world’s major emerging economies, BRICSFootnote 1 (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) has attracted the most attention among the other countries, so that China (11 articles), India (4 articles), South Africa (2 articles), Brazil (2 articles), and Russia (2 articles).

On the one hand, despite the financial crisis and the high impact of financial market volatility on the flow of capital and exchange rate that have affected the BRICS nations, their features such as gross national saving, trade volume, and current account balance are more desirable than the G7Footnote 2 countries (Coulibaly et al. 2018). On the other hand, the governments of BRICS countries play a crucial role in applying long-term policies such as SME policy and entrepreneurial policy that enhance entrepreneurial opportunities (Storey 2008; Rhisiart and Jones-Evans 2016). That is why the studies on BRICS countries are in high rank.

Industry and firm characteristic

Based on the previous IEO research, the widespread portion of IEO research is about manufacturing (37%) (see Table 5), so the most attention has been focused on high-tech manufacturing, as high technology firms are turning their technology into solutions for industry, government, or consumers (Veilleux et al. 2018). Also, high-tech firms often have breakthrough scientific knowledge, and based on this knowledge, they are developing or advancing superior technologies. Furthermore, on the other hand, internationalization seems to have made the most changes to the industry and moved it toward high-tech (Kiessling and Harvey 2008). Other portions of the studies were services (21%), ICT (15%), knowledge-based industry (11%), agriculture and trade (6%), and other industries (11%)Footnote 3.

Table 5 Frequency and trend of IEO research in the industry
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In the past, there was a belief that finding unique information about larger companies was more important to investors because investors often thought that trading in a larger company would naturally benefit more than small companies (Bhushan 1988). Based on reviewed studies, trends were not stable, and we have seen that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have attracted researchers’ attention in recent years (66%) (see Table 6).

Table 6 Frequency of firm size in IEO research
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SMEs have a fundamental role in countries’ economic and social development, so they are encouraged to participate in international trade. To seize IEO, the governments have defined a strategic network for SMEs to compete in international markets (Senik and Sham 2011).

According to the reviewed articles, international new ventures and born-global firms have the most focus on high-tech industries (see Tables 4 and 5). In line with the trend of the studies, we conclude that firm characteristics (firm age and firm size) have become less important over time in comparison with other elements in IEO research.

Opportunity dimension

Entrepreneurship is defined as the process of discovering, evaluating, and exploiting opportunities (see Fig. 6), as defined by Shane and Venkataraman in 2000, so these entrepreneurial opportunities are divided into three related dimensions:

  1. (1)

    Exploration, discovery, creation, recognition, identification, and other similar concepts;

  2. (2)

    Evaluation, assessment, development, and other similar concepts;

  3. (3)

    Exploitation, pursuing, chasing, execution, and other similar concepts.

Fig. 6
figure 6

The process of opportunity exploration, evaluation, and exploitation

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Some articles have examined only one of these dimensions, and others have examined several dimensions. In contrast, others have generally explored the concept of opportunity and have not identified a specific dimension.

In the early developments in entrepreneurship theory, EO has emerged as a primary concept of the entrepreneurial process (Zur 2015). Identifying entrepreneurial opportunities is one of the critical steps in the internationalization process, especially in born-global and new emerging ventures (Zahra et al. 2005; Muzychenko and Liesch 2015; Zur 2015). Three main factors influencing the identification of opportunities in the literature are prior knowledge, international network structure, and a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation (Chandra et al. 2009). Therefore, most studies on international entrepreneurial opportunities to globalization focus on opportunity recognition (59%) (see Table 7). The next IEO dimension that has been mostly considered in literature was opportunity exploitation (25 articles), and the last one was opportunity evaluation (21 articles).

Table 7 Frequency of IEO research in opportunity dimensions
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In most studies of IE, such as internationalization (Zahra et al. 2005; Nordman and Melén 2008; Vasilchenko and Morrish 2011), entry into new markets (Hannibal et al. 2016), and the pace of internationalization (Vasilchenko and Morrish 2011; Ciravegna et al. 2014), the aspects of IEO which have been considered commonly were identification and exploitation (19 articles).

The purpose and the focus of prior research

One of the most practical goals of this research is to find out the purpose, orientation, and focus of the articles. All the articles’ research purpose, significance, and focus have been identified to achieve this goal (see Table 8).

Table 8 Synthesis table of the articles purpose and focus
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Discussion and implications

Interpret quantitative findings

We identified the prominent factors that previous researches on IEO have been done in those concepts, such as opportunity dimensions, methodology of research, thematic area, industry types, firm characteristic, and regional distribution, to achieve a comprehensive trend analysis of prior research based on quantitative results.

Opportunity dimension

In terms of opportunity dimension, opportunity exploration (discovery or creation) as a fundamental concept for commencing entrepreneurial activity has gained the most attention. Prominent factors in opportunity exploration research are classified into 6 clusters that have interrelationships to each other. These factors are prior knowledge (Chandra et al. 2009), entrepreneurial alertness (Haaja 2019), cognition (Zahra et al. 2005; Shane et al. 2010), environmental conditions (Mainela & Puhakka 2009), social capital (Chandra et al. 2009), and systematic research (Mainela & Puhakka 2009).

The methodology of research

In prior used methods, the most commonly used methodology was qualitative, and in the qualitative method, the case study approach has the most portion.

Firm characteristic

Due to the significant role of SMEs in the economies of countries, the most studied firms were SMEs.

In the regional distribution aspect, we observe the countries of the European continent and North American countries had the most contribution to IEO research. Also, on the other hand, we interpreted both regional distribution and industry of research together. The majority of developed countries focused on high-tech industries and somewhat high-tech-based services. Moreover, when we considered three aspects of regional distribution, research industry, and opportunity dimension in relation to each other, it was concluded from its interpretation that the majority of developed countries focused on IEO recognition (see Fig. 7).

Fig. 7
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IEO research trend

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Interpretation of research purpose and research focus

Among the topics in which research on IEO was undertaken, internationalization is undoubtedly one of the top priorities. For this reason, researchers considered globalization in several aspects such as early internationalization and born-global firms (Zahra et al. 2005; Mort and Weerawardena 2006; Chandra et al. 2012), the impact of foreign market opportunities (Sakarya et al. 2007; Nordman and Melen 2008; Li 2013; Bhowmick 2019), the impact of network ties and knowledge-based view (Kontinen and Ojala 2011; Ciravegna et al. 2014; Bai et al. 2018; Fang et al. 2018), the effect of entrepreneurial personality traits (Ciravegna et al. 2014; Frank 2017 ), and the role of IEO recognition (Ellis 2011; Pflanz 2013; Muzychenko and Liesch 2015; Chetty et al. 2018).

The globalization of small and medium-sized enterprises can considerably contribute to the economic development of countries (García-Cabrera et al. 2016). That is why developed and developing countries emphasize SMEs’ behavior, and this fact is evident in prior research so that 66% of studies focused on SMEs and their concepts. According to the prior studies on SME with IEO approach, several concepts have been considered by researchers such as influencing factors on SMEs’ globalization (Senik and Sham 2011; Hanell and Ghauri 2016), developing high-tech SMEs through IEO (Nordman and Tolstoy 2016; Hanell and Ghauri 2016; Veilleux et al. 2018), family-based SMEs (Kontinen and Ojala 2011), and SMEs’ global strategies (Lazaris and Freeman 2018).

Corporate challenges or issues, and, on the other hand, the existence of lucrative foreign markets, sometimes motivate entrepreneurs to explore or create international opportunities. In high-tech firms that depend on cross-border markets, IEO recognition, evaluation, and exploitation are essential for development and survival (Veilleux et al. 2018).

In recent years, much attention has been paid to the topic of entrepreneurial immigrants in scholarly studies. The study has grown on immigrant entrepreneurs who have migrated from developing or developed countries to other economically developed countries (Lundberg and Rehnfors 2018) to stabilize firms by discovering or creating IEOs. Also, differences between natives and immigrant entrepreneurs in detecting or exploiting IEO have been considered in studies (Vinogradov and Jørgensen, 2017).

The cultural perspective has been one of the most significant factors in the study of IE and IEO. Studies on the impact of cultural norms (Hechavarria and Reynolds 2009), global entrepreneurial culture (Dimitratos et al. 2012), and cultural context (Ruiz et al. 2017) have been done in IE and IEO. The concepts that have been considered most in the studies are shown, and each concept is also divided into the following sub-concepts (see Fig. 8).

Fig. 8
figure 8

The extracted concepts from Table 8 that most discussed in IEO

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Conclusion and suggestions for future research

The primary goal of this study is to determine the current state of the art in the field of IEO and propose several research paths in this field to contribute to the current literature. To achieve the research goals, we revealed the trends in prior research by defining several crucial concepts. Based on specific periods, we provide summary tables to demonstrate the quantity of attention in each period.

According to reviewed articles on the entrepreneurial opportunity dimension, we have seen that the focus was more on the exploration (discovery or creation), and, in some cases, on the opportunity exploitation. Except for a few studies such as Chandra (2017), there has been less consideration on evaluating opportunities.

Opportunity evaluating is considered a significant step in the internationalization process. However, a study on opportunity evaluation can significantly contribute to the body of literature. We also focused on high-tech firms, and we identified that high-tech firms had attracted more attention. It should also be noted that the present era is the emergence of the fourth industrial revolution. This era is interspersed with concepts and technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence, blockchains, nanotechnology, cloud processing, biotechnology, the Internet of Things (IoT), and self-driving cars. Research with an IEO-based approach on manufacturing, services, and other industry types with the concepts of the fourth industrial revolution can be a significant path for future studies.

Defining the conceptual frameworks of the relationship between social networks and the IEO, social entrepreneurship and the IEO with globalization approach would prepare theoretical frameworks that provide prominent concepts to contribute to IEO literature. Among the prior research, developed countries were more on notice. According to a concept of IEO, developing countries and their new or old markets can play a prominent role in future research. They will improve the current state of the IEO. Although competitive advantage is one of the critical concepts in IE literature, prior research has paid less attention to it. Because of this, the concept of domestic or international competitive advantage can be investigated in future research.

In international entrepreneurship research, cultural issues are undeniable, and future research on topics such as cultural identity, cultural change, cultural conflict, and cultural attitudes can contribute to IEO literature. The cultural differences between local people and immigrants and their differences in opportunity recognition, evaluation, and exploitation can be valuable in future studies.

In the second step of the IEO process (see Fig. 6), entrepreneurs evaluate IEOs based on several concepts, one of which is time. The role of time in evaluating IEOs over the process of globalization has been less prominent in previous studies. Impacts of time and the role of time in evaluating the opportunity and how to conduct this assessment are issues that have rarely been seen in previous studies. Opportunity lifetime, identifying the role of time in evaluating IEOs over the internationalization process, identifying time-dependent concepts, and assessing them, can appear in future research.

Opportunity cost is one of the fundamental factors in opportunity evaluation. Opportunity costs should always be taken into account when evaluating opportunities. The costs and benefits of each opportunity must be considered and compared with other opportunities. This evaluation would lead to more profitable decision-making. Previous investigations have focused less on opportunity cost evaluation, which may be of interest in future studies and can contribute to the existing literature in this field.

Social, political, legal, and technological environments act as determinants of entrepreneurship prosperity in international markets.

Generally, some of the less prominent issues in the field of IEO studies have been overlooked and can be further evaluated in future studies (see Fig. 9).

Fig. 9
figure 9

The future directions of IEO research

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