Challenges and Strategic Responses of Born-Global Firms in the Agri-Food Sector: Internationalization Barriers, Digital Innovation, and Sustainable Growth

Abstract

Born-global firms, which seek substantial foreign revenue from or near their founding, face a distinctive version of the liabilities of newness and foreignness, and agri-food firms add constraints from perishability, food-safety regulation and certification. This paper develops an integrated framework linking internationalization barriers, digital capabilities, strategic adaptation and sustainability practices to international growth outcomes, grounded in international new venture theory, the Uppsala model, dynamic capabilities and the natural-resource-based view. Because no verified firm-level dataset identifying born-global agri-food firms could be accessed, the empirical design is a country-year panel built from World Bank World Development Indicators (2005–2024). It examines whether digital readiness and logistics performance are associated with the share of food in merchandise exports, and it is interpreted strictly as contextual, sector-level evidence rather than evidence about born-global firms. Firm-level propositions are specified for later testing with World Bank Enterprise Survey microdata. The study gives the definition of born globals based on operations, barrier response matrix which identifies the responses as those that have been validated in literature and those that require validation, and the codes that can be executed. No empirical estimates have been made yet; therefore, in the results section, we only give the model specifications, outputs, and decisions to be made. Implications for managers and policy makers are given based on the results obtained.

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