The formation of born global companies : a case study of the Finnish mobile gaming firms

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to determine the challenges that mobile gaming companies experience to become born globals, recognize how these challenges can be overcome with the application of the organization management system, and identify the success factors that conduct these companies to develop into born globals and the correlation with the challenges and strategies utilized by managers during the early stages of internationalization. There is extensive research on born global firms and the overall gaming industry, however studies on the early stages of internationalization of mobile gaming companies is limited. The theory presented in the research consists of firms' internationalization theories, organizational management system and challenges faced by creative and cultural industries which lay a foundation to deepen the study through empirical research. This thesis is a qualitative research, whilst four in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers from four game development studios. The research focuses on Finnish mobile game developers that have at least one game published globally.

The findings of this research suggest that the main challenges for mobile gaming companies are financial management, human resources, strategic management and long-term business planning. The strategies utilized to overcome these challenges are a combination of providing a healthy working environment with a sense of ownership to the employees, focus on market research and data analysis, being flexible and having the ability to adapt to a constantly changing environment, and hire highly skilled professionals to form a core team who deliver rapid results and influence newcomers disseminating the company’s culture. The success factor associated to these challenges and strategies are market research used to identify opportunities, trends, market niche, players’ preferences and target audience, and people, also mentioned as human resources, who are the fundamental for the company to develop high-quality games and nourish the organizational culture.