The vast literature on born globals and early internationalization has recently underlined the importance of international opportunity development for the subsequent internationalization of the firms. Along this line, academics called for research investigating opportunity development in born global context. Moreover, the role of institutions in this process has not been investigated yet. Then, scholars have called for comparative international entrepreneurship research. Following these suggestions, the authors developed an exploratory research on the role of institutions in the process of opportunity development of born globals. By comparing three cases from China and three from Italy, the purpose of the research is to highlight how different institutional contexts influence the international opportunity development process in the case of born globals. The analysis of case studies led the authors to create a model and drawing discussion about the interactions between institutions and opportunity development. Practical implications and future research are discussed.
