Entrepreneurship and SME internationalization in Latin AmericaThis special issue comes to life after the First Global Entrepreneurship Development Centre Conference at Kingston Business School London in October 2016, which was attended by participants from five continents.We announced at the conference the possibility for this special issue followed by an open call for papers.The issue contains seven articles on the topic of entrepreneurship and small-and medium-sized enterprise (SME) internationalization in Latin America.Entrepreneurship and small firms are becoming an ever more important topic for academics, policy-makers, and universities around the world.One of the reasons is the way they contribute to the growth of local and often deprived economies.It is well-known fact that smaller firms are forced to extend the scope of their business because they face a large number of international competitors in their home market (Felzensztein, 2016).Competition in today's environment not only means local competition, but mainly international, where with the new use of technologies SMEs can have the chance to compete with multinationals if they are able to achieve a differential strategy.Many SMEs have advanced in their internationalization processes and many Latin American countries are adopting specific policies to enhance SMEs' internationalization potentials to encourage their further participation in global markets (OECD, 2018) and develop active formal and informal networks for their internationalization, considered a key for reaching global customers (Felzensztein et al., 2015;Fuerst and Zettinig, 2015).Felzensztein et al. (2015) examine the issues of networking for the internationalization process of SMEs and the effects of both the network and entrepreneurial orientation on the scope of small firm internationalization. Findings suggest that the greater the number of networks utilized, the more entrepreneurs are likely to target markets based in diverse regions of the world.This may have a real impact for SMEs from Latin America expanding abroad and the support public policies they need for their internationalization into global competitive markets.More recently, Felzensztein et al. (2018) compare SMEs in New Zealand vs South America and found that small firms in regional clusters located in the southern hemisphere use local informal networks for their internationalization.Understanding the use of informal networks, Dimitratos et al. (2014) provide important insights for entrepreneurs in Latin America that are choosing their internationalization strategies as well as for the institutions that may support them, such as export promotion agencies and trade associations.According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Chile and Colombia have large percentages of entrepreneurs (more than 80 percent) that exhibit some degree of international orientation (Amorós et al., 2015;Felzensztein, 2016).From this perspective, it is interesting to analyze, learn, and explore some results in greater detail related to the internationalization process and the role of SMEs in the Latin American context, topics that this special issue covers in seven interesting articles.The articles included in this special issue Two out of the seven contributions are conceptual by nature, four articles provide empirical contributions, whereas one article offers a literature review on entrepreneurship and international entrepreneurship in Latin America (see Table I for an overview of the articles included in this special issue).Lopez and Alvarez (2018) contribute the first systematic literature review on the state of research in (international) entrepreneurship in the context of Latin America.