Even if the need to innovate has always existed, it has been accentuated in recent years due to the acceleration of technological change and the growing world competition: entrepreneurship - meant as the individual capacity to take risk, to produce innovation and to predict and act upon change – becomes a crucial factor of firms’ competitiveness. At the same time, international alliances have been recognised, above all in emerging countries, as the best way to improve local firms’ entrepreneurship and learning capability. However strategic alliances show a high degree of failure, thus posing the need to investigate the factors that can impact on their longevity and success.

      According to the above considerations, the aim of our paper is to investigate: a) the linkage between national culture and entrepreneurship, b) how culture affects firms’ propensity to international co-operation.

      Keywords: entrepreneurship, knowledge, culture, individualism vs. collectivism