International Alliances Formation between SMEs: International Experience and/or Attractiveness?

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether international experience (firm 's previous international alliance experience and team international experience), or attractiveness (previous alliances with large firms) influence French biotech firms' propensity to internationalize by forming international alliances. The hypotheses were tested on a longitudinal event history dataset of French biotechnology enterprises. Our results show that being attractive for large firms does not in itself enhance the probability of forming a new international alliance with another SME. Internationalization of SMEs through alliances mainly results from international experience.