The pre-internationalization period from venture foundation to its first international market entry is researched extensively by scholars in the field of international entrepreneurship. However, we know less about the internationalization process per se and especially of how it unfolds over time beyond the firms initial entry into global markets. Moreover, learning and networking and their interplay are considered important activities underpinning the process of internationalization. Learning does not happen in isolation – it happens in relationships. Besides our understanding of the importance of learning and networking as behavioral processes underlying internationalization, we only have a scarce understanding of how these two processes play out over time as the new venture internationalizes. 

In order to shed more light on the interplay of learning and networking during entrepreneurial internationalization, I applied event-driven process research and captured learning and networking processes as they unfolded in real-time over a 32 month period within an international new venture from the global mobile video game industry in Colombia (South America). 

My research is able to make important contributions to the field of international entrepreneurship. First, I provide a method of how process theory can be created based on longitudinal, real-time process data. Second, I am showing how experiential learning as a process of transformation of experience plays out at the level of the entrepreneur and the team as the process of entrepreneurial internationalization unfolds. Third, my framework shows that the role of the network goes beyond the common view in international entrepreneurship literature of the network as a source of knowledge. Fourth, my research illustrates empirically of how dynamic capabilities emerge in a new venture and how they are able to reconfigure the resource base of the firm in a concrete way on the micro-level. Fifth, my research is able to extend our current knowledge on the cyclical nature between learning and networking by providing empirical evidence of the feedback loop between these two processes and the triggers and underlying mechanisms causing a spiraling effect. Sixth, I argue that futureoriented sensemaking in interaction with others is central to strategy-making during entrepreneurial internationalization.