**1. Introduction**

Muchof the previous research on internationalisation behaviour concludes that firms become involved in international markets gradually [1]. However, in the last 20 years, a new kind of business has emerged that does not follow a gradual internationalisation pattern, but is characterised by rapid commitment to international activity. Oviatt and Dougall [2] called these businesses 'Born Globals' (BGs), and they have given rise to a new line of research known as international entrepreneurship centred on the study of how new ventures are committed to developing the processes of 'discovery, enactment, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities across national borders to create future goods and services' ([3], p.7). Past research in this area has centred on determining the factors that might explain the exceptional speed with

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2017 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

which certain new ventures can internationalise [3–10]. However, several authors consider that to be able to advance our understanding of BGs, we need to analyse the factors that can affect their competitiveness after their creation, particularly from a marketing perspective [11–17].

Traditionally, lack of market knowledge has been regarded as one of the biggest impediments small businesses have to overcome in their internationalisation process [18–20] in that it constitutes a key variable for proactively seeking international opportunities [21, 22]. McNaugthon [23] shows that companies concerned to expand their knowledge of foreign markets have a broader perspective and there is a greater chance that they will seize the opportunities that appear in them.

If we attempt to identify the main source of this knowledge, we observe that traditional gradualist models attribute a fundamental role in knowledge generation—and, therefore, in the internationalisation process—to the firm's experience (at home and abroad) [1]. However, in the case of BGs, knowledge based on experience cannot be considered the only source of knowledge about foreign markets that these firms use, as their experience is minimal. For this reason, it becomes necessary to investigate how BGs manage to acquire and interpret information about markets and how they translate it into specific actions that affect the development of skills that help them to remain dynamic in international markets [22, 24, 25].

Many marketing scholars argue that market orientation plays a determining role in the international success of new businesses due to its contribution to effective knowledge management [26–30]. In this line, Knight and Cavusgil [31] point out that the market orientation of new international ventures enhances their understanding of their customers' present and future needs and optimises the development of distinctive actions that can meet these needs by providing a more valuable offer than that of their rivals.

In addition, based on the social perspective, the study of entrepreneurship has also highlighted the importance of the links entrepreneurs develop with members of their networks as they facilitate rapid access to the information and knowledge associated with the latest trends in the new markets, and with certain key resources that are not initially available to these firms [32–36].

However, although from the theoretical viewpoint there seems to be a strong complementarity between market orientation and membership of business networks, as shown in certain studies [13, 37, 38], little is known about the way these factors combine. In this vein, Loane and Bell [18] highlight the need for research attention to the mechanisms and routines that enable new international ventures to generate and manage knowledge through relationships they establish in networks. In turn, Evanschitzky [38] highlights the importance of studying their influence on competitiveness and firm performance, in light of the scarce knowledge to date.

In this respect, this study covers the mutually complementary nature of both factors in a single construct known as network market orientation (NMO). Thus, although previous studies have emphasised the importance of MO in the context of relationships between firms, they have not analysed it as an inter-business phenomenon in itself, but rather as the sum of the market orientations of the various individual firms [22, 37, 39, 40]. The present work analyses the role of NMO differently, understanding it as an orientation established jointly by the different members making up the network.

However, the effect of any organisational factor is usually subject to significant causal ambiguity regarding the way firms maintain their capacity to use the knowledge generated in order to continue seizing the market opportunities that arise [41]. Adopting an NMO that promotes a cognitive effort and collective approach to learning can help to overcome this ambiguity by improving understanding of the new and changing links between action and performance and, in this way, recognising the need to face changes in existing routines [22, 40, 42, 43]. In line with this idea, it is essential that BGs complement their adoption of an NMO with the generation of dynamic absorptive capability in order to ensure continuing commitment to construct new resources and capabilities and reconfigure existing ones, thereby adapting to new market demands [22, 44–48].

Specifically, this absorptive capability is related to the assimilation of external information into the firm's internal knowledge base [4, 49]. It is crucial for each firm to develop this capability individually, since it enables the external knowledge generated in the network context to be perfectly understood and assimilated internally by the firm and put to use successfully [50–54].

Ultimately, this study aims to contribute to the existing literature by analysing the way in which BGs start by adopting an NMO in order to access and systematically manage information from foreign markets and the way this orientation contributes to generating a dynamic absorptive capability that helps them to capitalise on the knowledge generated, thus facilitating their consolidation abroad.

In order to meet this objective, we first present the theoretical frame used to formulate hypotheses on the influence of NMO on BGs' international competitiveness and performance. The empirical study carried out to test the hypotheses is then reported, with an analysis of the results obtained and the main conclusions. Finally, limitations and future research lines associated with this study are described.
