Abstract/Summary

Commercial burdens and dogmas are not always on the same path, especially in the construction sector. In a constantly changing working environment, with strong market fluctuations that need to be absorbed, Micro, Small and Medium sized construction companies might need to seek new market sections overseas. In order to do so, they would need to leverage strong competitive advantages to establish themselves in different contexts, outside of their domestic markets. This paper focuses on the paradigm shift needed by Micro, Small and Medium size construction companies serving the sector venturing overseas. It will be explored the existing gap between theory and practice, before highlighting some of their main features, including their entrepreneurial mindset when it comes to considering construction technologies and specialist services. After overviewing patterns, values, challenges and features of these companies, the focus will then be on the competitive advantage features and the paradigm shift characteristics to build a framework able to allow these companies to operate in international markets. A mixed methodology gathering information from observations, semi-structured interviews, document reviews about specific case studies, will be put in place. It emerged the importance to raise MSMEs’ awareness about how to fit their features to international markets.