If research on international business can slip by neglect of unsuccessful risk- takers, it can also err by assuming that exiting firms and business units are failures. This problem is well illustrated by, and pertinent to, research on inter-national joint ventures, alliances, and other such projects that involve cooperation among independent enterprises. Investigators who observe high turnover rates in these projects have commonly taken them as a proof of governance difficulties, or other infirmities of the organizational form. An important consideration, however, is that such projects are frequently intended to pursue some special-purpose, or "one-shot" opportunity. Each investment has an expected cash flow that, however safe or risky it may appear, possesses only a limited longevity. The partner firms in the venture, by contrast, can be regarded as portfolios of such investments. Their life expectancies much exceed their individual specific joint projects, even if the single-firm and joint-venture projects are drawn from populations with the same underlying distribution of returns. Thus, research in international business can be thrown off-track by the assumption that terminated businesses are always failures, when they might be wrapped up successes.