Abstract: The born global enterprises conducting rapid globalization have become the emerging subjects of embedding and controlling global value chains in a country or special region. Starting from born global enterprises, through analyzing the pre-effect of international entrepreneurial orientation on the transformation of innovation ability into international performance, this paper reveals the formation path of such enterprises’ innovation ability, and builds a conceptual model of the relationship between international entrepreneurial orientation and international performance of born global enterprises. Through building the conceptual model and the questionnaire and the empirical analysis of 422 enterprises, this paper reveals the improvement mechanism of born global enterprises’ international performance and the moderating effects from industry technical attributes perspective.
We find that the natural engine for global enterprises to enter, maintain and expand the international market is whether they have and can continue to form an entrepreneurial orientation of active competition, active innovation and risk-taking in international market. The stronger the willingness and ability of competition, innovate and taking risks in the international market, the higher the international performance of born global enterprises.
Technology innovation ability also helps born global enterprises’ potential performance convert into the real international competitive advantage which is based on the growth of the overseas market and international business staff. The process of tacit knowledge accumulation, knowledge externalization and knowledge encoding of enterprises promotes the upgrading of technology innovation ability which is conducive to enhancing the ability of born global enterprises to cope with environmental changes, thus contributing to the growth of international market share and personnel size of born global enterprises.
High technology industry has strong moderating effects on born global enterprise internationalization performance. By the characteristics of active competition, active innovation and risk-taking and the goal orientation of improving technology innovation ability, high-tech born global enterprises will pay more attention to the active competition and risk-taking spirit based on technology innovation, so that the international entrepreneurial orientation and technology innovation ability can be more effectively transformed into real international performance. Relatively speaking, born global enterprises in low and medium technology industries, may rely more on a vertical innovation based on product quality improvement and market scale expansion than those in high-tech industries. Therefore, the effect intensity of technology innovation ability and international entrepreneurial orientation will be weakened, so low and medium type technology industry has a weak moderating effects. According to the degree of the influence of technical attributes, international entrepreneurial orientation and technology innovation ability on internationalization performance, the moderating effects of technical attributes of born global enterprises can be divided into enhanced moderating effects(including extremely strong moderating effects, sub-strong moderating effects and weak-strong moderating effects)and weakened moderating effects(including very weak moderating effects, sub-weak moderating effects and strong-weak moderating effects)two categories and six subcategories. First of all, with the upgrading of industry technology from low and medium level to high level, both of them tend to increase the intensity of internationalization performance of born global enterprises, regardless of international entrepreneurial orientation or technology innovation ability. On the whole, when the born global enterprises belong to the low-and medium-tech industries, the industry technology level has a weakened moderating effect on the internationalization performance of the born global enterprises based on international entrepreneurial orientation and technology innovation ability, while when the born global enterprises are in the high-tech industries, the industry technology level has an enhanced moderating effect.
In addition, from the perspective of international entrepreneurial orientation and technology innovation ability, the two moderating effects can also be divided into different types. When the international entrepreneurial orientation and technological innovation ability of the born global enterprises are very strong, the technical attributes of the high-tech industry will play a very enhanced moderating effect. The high-level international entrepreneurial orientation and technological innovation ability of the high-tech industry will greatly promote the internationalization performance of the born global enterprises. With the decline of international entrepreneurial orientation and technology innovation ability, even the born global enterprises in high-tech industries have a corresponding decline in the moderating effect of their industry technical attributes. They have experienced the evolution from sub-strong moderation to weak-strong moderation respectively. At this time, the born global international entrepreneurial orientation and technology innovation ability of high-tech industries are changing. As a result, the effect of internationalization performance improvement has been weakened. When the international entrepreneurial orientation and technology innovation ability of the born global enterprises are very low, the moderating effect of the technical attributes of the low-tech industries is very weak, and the low-level international entrepreneurial orientation and technical innovation ability of the born global enterprises play a very weak role in enhancing the international performance.
Compared with trade-oriented enterprises, production-oriented born global enterprises have stronger willingness and motivation to compete actively in the international market, undertake risks and implement product innovation because of their corresponding product dependence. Therefore, there are significant differences in the correlation between the internationalization performance of production-oriented and trade-oriented born global enterprises and international entrepreneurial orientation and technology innovation ability. The size and age’s effects to born global enterprises internationalization performance are not significant.
This paper not only enriches the theory of enterprise internationalization, but also provides a new theory basis and management practice for manysmall and medium-sized enterprises’ rapid internationalization. We suggest that the born global enterprises should not expand the market blindly after entering the international market, so that they choose internationalization route and schedule according to their own international entrepreneurial orientation and the technical innovation ability. As for the low-tech enterprises, the key is to cultivate and promote international entrepreneurial orientation and innovation ability, but for the high-tech enterprise, they should focus on the international entrepreneurial orientation, technology innovation ability and the technical attributes. In addition, the rapid globalization of production enterprise need help from innovative product or service, so as to improve technology value of product continuously which is the key to the success of production-oriented enterprises rapid globalization, however trade-oriented enterprise not only construct international marketing channel, but also should pay more attention to the accumulation of technical strength.

Key words: born global enterprise, international entrepreneurial orientation, technology innovation ability, industry technical attribute