Effects of Social Media Usage on the Speed of International Growth of an International New Venture

The introduction of social media tools in entrepreneurial ventures has had a strong impact on their ability to access international networks, increase their competitiveness in foreign markets and improve their performance. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, studies capturing the impact of social media usage on the internationalization process of International New Ventures (INVs) are lacking. We empirically analyze how social media usage influences the speed of the international growth of INVs in different phases of growth. Our results reveal that during the company’s introductory phase, social media has a primary role in heightening the speed of internationalization. However, in more mature phases, the need for direct sales personnel and personal relationships increases. This ensures the company’s insider position in international large account networks and guarantees a sustainable speed of international growth. Managerial implications are discussed as well as avenues for future research

Institutional Reinforcement in a Newly Emerged Digital Industry

There is a growing number of newly emerging digital sectors where firms have potential for a rapid scalable expansion. One of them is mobile gaming, being triggered by development of smart devices, where Finland-based entrepreneurial firms have captured global markets in an extremely fast pace. How and why have these Finnish firms achieved a global market positioning, particularly in the light of Finland’s small home market, relative cultural isolation, and peripheral location? By building on the institutional polycentrism approach, this paper sheds light on how global industry-specific and informal socio-cultural institutional arrangements have been reinforced by local formal, government-sponsored ones to create the conditions for global leadership in a digital industry. This paper makes important contribution to the better understanding of the role of institutions in driving emergence of digital industries and shaping global competitiveness of home country firms in these digital sectors

Internationalization of indoor positioning platform firms : Insights from loose coupling theory

Indoor positioning platforms are gaining popularity in various indoor environments, serving multiple purposes such as navigation, asset tracking, proximity marketing, and indoor analytics. However, the diversity of potential use cases and technical complexity makes these platforms challenging to internationalize across different markets and customer segments. Drawing on the characteristics of digitalization framework and the loose coupling theory, we analyze and explain the phenomenon in an indoor positioning platform firm. Our findings reveal that platforms’ openness and digital affordances played a pivotal role in its internationalization by enabling customization of the service to meet the needs of foreign markets and industry segments. Both loose and tight couplings were essential for the platform's global expansion. We also revealed the dynamic nature of couplings in the firm's internationalization journey.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Characteristics of digital artifacts in international endeavors of digital-based international new ventures

Research Summary Current research on digital artifacts and international business reveals that digitalization is changing how firms enter international markets and operate within them. The unbounded nature of digital artifacts provides opportunities for entrepreneur-driven firms to rapidly launch and develop digital platforms for international markets. However, extant literature provides little guidance on leveraging the specific characteristics of digital artifacts and what entrepreneurs should do to facilitate internationalization. We conducted an extensive longitudinal case study spanning more than 10 years to garner data on digital-based INV pursuing internationalization. We aimed to conceptualize a theoretical model explaining the role of entrepreneurs in integrating, building, and reconfiguring their capabilities to leverage the characteristics of digital artifacts for platform development. Managerial Summary What actions should entrepreneurs take to leverage the characteristics of digital artifacts to support their firm's internationalization? This study offers entrepreneurs a model to pinpoint those actions and possible avenues for digital platform development in the international market context. The model demonstrates how firms can apply digital artifact characteristics during the phases of internationalization and how those characteristics can facilitate and accelerate the international development of a digital platform. The findings also reveal how different entrepreneurial resources and capabilities should be integrated, built, and reconfigured throughout the process.© 2023 The Authors. Global Strategy Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Strategic Management Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Technical, Strategic, and Cultural Bottlenecks of Born-Global-Digital Firms

A born-global-digital firm belongs to the group of firms that apply and develop digital technologies to achieve early internationalization. However, there might be different types of bottlenecks related to foreign market entries and the development of digital services affecting those markets that limit such firms’ global activities. In this work, we divide these bottlenecks into technical, strategic, and cultural forms. This multi-case study examines the impact of those bottlenecks and how that might be overcome. We provide practical and theoretical alternatives to bypass the impediments created by the bottlenecks

The Internationalization of B2B Digital Platform Providers: The Role of Cross-National Distance and Digital Characteristics

Digitalization offers new opportunities and changes how firms can explore and enter new markets. Current literature has deepened our understanding of the internationalization process of the digital-based firms, but it provides very little guidance on how the specific characteristics of digital artifacts enable and accelerate internationalization and how the cross-national distance and cultural difference may play a role. We use a longitudinal single case approach to explore how a Business-to-Business (B2B) platform provider internationalized its operations from the inception. The case study illustrates that the ongoing development of the digital service and the integration with new devices played an important role in the firm’s internationalization and expansion into new markets. We also observed that cross-cultural distance and cultural differences played an unexpected role. Last, we propose avenues for future research

Social Media Firm Specific Advantages as Enablers of Network Embeddedness of International Entrepreneurial Ventures

Combining internalisation theory and internationalisation networking literature we study how international entrepreneurial ventures use social media to internationalise. Our qualitative study reveals the governance mechanisms and learning that are part of a dynamic process. We explain how firms leverage their own social media capabilities and bundle them with the capabilities of foreign partners, which they leverage to create new social-media capabilities to grow internationally. Firms leverage social-media capabilities to become embedded within emerging and strategic networks, a position that is central for firms to mitigate threats of opportunism and bounded reliability and to overcome liabilities connected to smallness, newness, and foreignness

Entrepreneurial Decision-Making Logic Related to Software Development in Different Growth Phases of INVs

Software-based innovations with global marketpotential are the main product offering of digital-based International New Ventures, an emerging type of rapidly internationalizing firm. Despite increasing research attention on the internationalization phases of these firms, knowledge of how the characteristics of the firm’s software offerings change over time remains scarce. In this paper, we analyze how standardization, customization and localization evolve through the growth and commitment of International New Ventures in foreign markets. Specifically, we posit that an entrepreneurial decision-making logic based on a logic of effectuation or causation acts as a trigger mechanism for specific software changes over time. Therefore, this article responds to calls for research on digital entrepreneurship and thus contributes to information system, international business, and entrepreneurship literature.peerReviewe