The innovativeness of Born-Globals and customer orientation: Learning from Indian Born-Globals

Born-Global firms, a newly emerging organizational form targeting international markets as a primary source of business from their inception, have innovativeness, requiring an intimate knowledge of their customer, as a primary feature. This study explores how a Born-Global's customer orientation leads to innovativeness through technological capability for customer relationship management (CRM) and external customer information management. Our empirical results, based on responses from 154 Indian managers, indicate that a Born-Global's customer orientation is an effective enabler of its innovativeness, whose effects are mediated by technological capability for CRM and external customer information management. Although significantly affected by customer orientation, the results further indicate that relationship quality with the buyer does not influence a Born-Global's innovativeness. When CRM technology and managing customer information obtained from external sources are employed, customer orientation significantly helps maintain the innovativeness of Born-Globals according to the results. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.