Communities in the internationalization process

Abstract Much of the work on industrial location, internationalization and innovation is based on firm- or firm-network-level research, but does not consider the role of industry-based professional communities that can be crucial in providing access to knowledge, resources and personal networks. These communities, whose membership reaches well beyond firms themselves, are indispensable components of firms’ everyday activities, yet are often overlooked when investigating firm behavior. This paper focuses on the one hand on the role of local communities and those individuals that form them, and on the other hand on how they link with international communities and become crucial facilitators of internationalization processes. In a co-evolutionary perspective, we investigate the role of local professional communities and the local-global interfaces that are created in internationalization processes, and how such localized activity may be associated with regional development. In a conceptual discussion, we propose that local professional communities and their local-international community connections are crucial to the capacity to engage in internationalization projects. From this, we discuss a number of related questions: First, who are the members of local professional communities and how do they create knowledge? Second, how do local professional communities develop and what are the driving forces that underlie their growth? Third, what are the conditions for the reproduction of local professional communities? We conclude by highlighting that the interrelationship between local and international communities is a critical feature of a permissive environment that facilitates corporate success in the internationalization process, and this favorable interaction between firms and their environment equally impacts the development prospects of the city-regions where they are located.