What happens to international business theory when business activity moves beyond terrestrial markets?
This roundtable explores how the New Space Economy invites scholars to rethink international business thought and practice. While IB theory and human activity in outer space both took off in the early 1960s, space has often remained peripheral to IB debates. Today, as commercial activity expands in low Earth orbit and beyond, the space economy offers a powerful setting for reconsidering internationalization, value chains, market creation, and the role of multinational enterprises in frontier domains.
The discussion will examine how New Space challenges traditional assumptions about internationalization, governance, institutional distance, entrepreneurial opportunity, and the boundaries of international business as a field.
👥 Facilitators
• Tim Vorley - Oxford Brookes Business School
• Sebastian Herbert Fuchs - Tecnológico de Monterrey / Oxford Brookes Business School
🧭 Discussion questions
• How can IB theory accommodate market creation through New Space activities?
• How can space value chain governance challenges be aligned with the institutional challenges of space?
• Does New Space call for a new role for IB within the broader management scholarly community?
• Will IB become an integrative lens for management thought, or a context for other management disciplines?
• What can IB offer New Space practitioners and how can IB scholarship move closer to New Space business?
• How do entrepreneurial opportunity recognition and realization work for New Space entrepreneurs?
• How can internationalization into space be sold internally within firms?
Join us for a focused discussion on how the Space Economy can help management scholars rethink international business, market creation, frontier value chains, institutional complexity, and the future boundaries of IB theory and practice.
🗓️ August 1, 2026 | 2:00–5:30 PM
📍 Loews Hotel, Philadelphia, USA
🔗 Register: https://lnkd.in/e3czZT4R
📩 Questions: Mehdi.montakhabi@said.oxford.edu
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Enrique Acebo
University of León
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