With an influx of highly educated migrants comes an increase in cultural breadth, ideas, and perspectives in organizations, which in turn is linked to a variety of positive effects and outcomes, such as innovation. In this paper, we study highly educated migrant innovativeness. Building on the idea that migrants’ experiences prior to migration, specifically their exposure to hardships and lack of opportunities (what we refer to as “developmental deprivation”) may be a driving force behind generating novel and useful ideas in their destination countries. We draw on self-determination theory and decision-making inclusion literature to develop our hypotheses, which are supported in a study of highly educated migrants from 45 countries working in the private and public sectors of Sweden. First and foremost, there is a significant relationship between high levels of developmental deprivation and high levels of innovativeness in the destination country. In addition, to be included in decision-making is critical for high innovativeness among those migrants who have not experienced developmental deprivation to any larger degree. However, for those who have experienced developmental deprivation in their origin country, their innovativeness is higher at low levels of decision-making inclusion. Contributions, limitations and future research are discussed before concluding the paper.

A critical theme in international business and innovation pedagogy is preparing future business leaders and policymakers to address and solve the “Grand Challenges” of today. These challenges necessitate coordinated and sustained efforts from diverse stakeholders toward clearly defined goals, with solutions often emerging from social and technological innovation. Consequently, international business education, particularly in innovation, serves as a starting point for tackling these Grand Challenges. This paper examines the role of international business programs in addressing Grand Challenges through short-term international educational exchanges that promote multi-stakeholder, cross-sector collaboration, specifically through business innovation camps. We present insights from two three-week international innovation camps held in 2023 and 2024, a collaboration between two business schools – one in Finland and one in Mexico. These camps aimed to develop innovative solutions for the global issue of overweight and obesity using design thinking. Students engaged with representatives from Finnish and Mexican businesses, researchers, and experts, facilitating design thinking and service prototyping. The camps provided immersive, experience-based learning for students and offered development opportunities for instructors and external stakeholders. Overall, the camps enabled productive and creative interactions among diverse stakeholders, fostering solutions that would be unlikely achievable in other settings.

This study investigates the pursuit of international entrepreneurial opportunities (IEO), challenging the traditionally linear perception of this process. By utilizing the abductive process research approach and a critical realist lens, we evaluate IEOs within various contexts over time aiming for both iterative and flexible theorizing. The research explores the reciprocal interaction between entrepreneurs and their environments, examining how contexts shape opportunity pursuit and its evaluation, which affect favourable business strategies. In turn, opportunity pursuit influences the way entrepreneurs perceive surrounding environments and act upon that perception. Our findings reveal that opportunity pursuit is a non-linear process which is deeply influenced by integration with context. We highlight three main contributions to opportunity theory: the multiplicity of contexts and their effects, path dependence, and the reconsideration of temporality in opportunity pursuit. The study advocates for a paradigm shift towards recognizing the complex, non-linear nature of entrepreneurial opportunity evaluation, moving away from oversimplified traditional models. Our research advances the IEO discourse by identifying inefficiencies in current debates and suggesting pathways for further investigation.