The relationship between product and international diversification: The role of experience
We establish prior diversification experience as a key determinant of the relationship between growth of product and international diversification. Prior diversification experience allows firms to overcome short-run constraints on simultaneous diversification growth imposed by the difficulty to transfer tacit knowledge, ambiguous competencies, and limited absorptive capacity. Studying U.S. and European firms, we find a positive relationship between growth in product and international scope for firms with high and a negative one for those with little prior diversification experience. Further, we find that product diversification experience has greater impact than international diversification experience.
