MARGARIDA FONTES IS A RESEARCHER li/Eat the Instituto Nacional de LYL Enghenaria e Tecnologia Industrial in Lisbon, Portugal, and Rod Coombs is Professor of Technology Management at the Manchester School of Management, United Kingdom. This paper addresses the process of internationalisation of new technology based firms (NTBFs), focusing on the case of firms from small, less advanced economies. NTBFs operating in this type of environment are frequently confronted with problems at the level of supply and demand of technology. Therefore, the need to obtain the technological knowledge and the markets they cannot find locally is the major drive behind their internationalisation efforts. On the basis of empirical research on a group of Portuguese NTBFs, the paper discusses the conditions that led firms to internationalise their activities along the technology and market dimensions and analyses the strategies they adopted. It is concluded that NTBFs have been more effective with respect to technology than to market internationalisation, although both objectives are closely linked in firms' strategies and the results achieved at one level are used to assist the other. The ability to establish a network of supportive relationships that compensates for their insufficiencies with respect to resources and competences, emerges as instrumental to the success of the efforts of NTBFs.
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