Entrepreneurship, Emerging Technologies, Emerging Markets

Academics and practitioners alike have long understood the benefits, if not the risks, of both emerging markets and emerging technologies.Yet it is only recently that foresighted firms have embraced emerging technologies and emerging markets through entrepreneurial activity. Emerging technologies and emerging markets present both unique challenges and tremendous opportunities for those firms and individuals who focus their search for competitive advantage on them. Here, we provide examples of effective commercial pathways for both intra- and entrepreneurial ventures embracing these phenomena. First, we describe how one intrapreneurial large firm is investigating emerging markets such as India and China (emerging economies) with emerging technologies to create a worldwide business solution power. Then the investigation of an emerging technology is provided, that of nanotechnology, by a small entrepreneurial firm utilizing emerging market skill sets to define and enable worldwide business solutions. Interestingly, both of the respective commercialization strategies are based on competency theory albeit, used differently. Finally, we discuss the ability of large and small firm competency-based strategies to wrest value from the opportunities inherent in emerging markets and technologies.