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There is widespread knowledge that entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial organizations are among major drivers for sustained economic growth.Literature on entrepreneurship offers a few theoretical perspectives, such as traits-based, institutions-based, resource-based, organizational behavior-based and cross-cultural comparative points of view.First of all is the debate between traits and institutions.The former is mainly focused on the question of what motivates individual entrepreneurs to start new ventures and why many of those individuals break away from large organizations, while the latter is more concerned with how entrepreneurial firms are guided and influenced by the surrounding environment that set formal and informal rules of the game.In the era of economic globalization, international entrepreneurship has gained increasing levels of enthusiasm among scholars, practitioners, and policy makers.The present study takes a comparative approach to the examination of international entrepreneurship with special attention to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as these organizations play a vital role in many societies (e.g., innovation, revenue contribution, job creation, etc.) but they are also among the most vulnerable in the ever more intertwined and often volatile marketplace.Recognizing many challenges and high failure rates among SMEs, especially being caught in the worldwide economic hard time, many governments and policy makers have included regulatory reforms and small business rescue plans in their economic recovery strategies (World Bank, 2010).The primary purpose of the present study is to explore how SMEs triumph over barriers in the time of dynamic socioeconomic changes so that to develop a contextual framework for weighing strategic options as well as assessing policy implications.Key factors examined include some unique characteristics of SMEs (e.g., entrepreneurship vision, entry niche, resource acquisition, organizational capabilities, and strategic options for going international) and social institutional variables (e.g., culture, government regulations, institutional reforms both at home and abroad), which may assist or hamper an entrepreneurs capability to expand business operations domestically or across borders.Country-firm specific examples are incorporated to illustrate ways to assess and exploit rising opportunities for SMEs and international entrepreneurship.