The Role of Digitalization on the Internationalization Strategy of Born-Digital Companies

Digital technologies have led to born-digital companies, defined by their highly digitalized value chains, designed at their inception. Born-digital (BD) companies leverage digitalization across their value chains in the internationalization path. However, despite this emergence, very few empirical studies in international business literature have explained the impact of bricolage in conducting value chain activities and exploiting the internationalization strategy of BD companies. The present study responds to these omissions of how the digitalization of the value chain activities and the internationalization strategy enhance companies by allowing them to reach customers (users) and partners with available resources and less time. The results indicate that the digitalization of value chain activities facilitates the re-use and mixing of the resources at hand to overcome challenges, innovate solutions, or create new opportunities for international growth, in line with the bricolage theory. Overall, this study contributes to international business literature regarding, specifically, the behaviors of born-digital companies as they strategically approach internationalization efforts. </p

Small and Medium Sized Enterprises and the COVID-19 Response

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a crisis that has impacted international business and entrepreneurship globally. Many small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been particularly hard hit, yet many are also finding strategies to survive and even thrive in this “new normal”.  This chapter highlights the survival strategies of SMEs in the small open economy context of Finland where, alike most European countries, international trade has been restricted due to the pandemic. We conduct a qualitative case analysis of five Finnish SMEs across different industry sectors, describing the internal and external changes they have undergone during the crisis, and we also shed light on the strategies and contingency planning they have been employing in order to survive. From the results, it is evident that internationalization remains an opportunity for Finnish SMEs. We conclude the chapter by summarizing our recommendations for SMEs dealing with the current and the next crisis, while also considering the generalizability of those recommendations in environments less stable and developed as the Finnish context.</p

Key success factors of SME internationalisation: A cross-country perspective

The concept of global mindset was introduced more than a decade ago as a prerequisite for successful internationalisation of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, the pace of global integration and globalisation has accelerated, and complexity has increased. Therefore, the authors ask: To what extent is global mindset still a critical driver for successful international expansion of SMEs? We are particularly interested in learning how global mindset is reflected in the decision making of internationalising SMEs in Finland. To answer this question, we test four propositions which concern the relationship between global mindset, decision-making logic and SME performance. Our empirical study is based on a cross-sectional sample of Finnish SMEs, and the authors find that global mindset seems to be linked to both effectual decisionmaking logic and improved international performance. On the other hand, in our data set effectual decision making and SME performance were not linked; thus, global mindset predicts international rather than overall performance of the Finnish SMEs. Overall, this study confirms the continued relevance of the global mindset concept. Furthermore, it indicates the connection between global mindset and entrepreneurial decision making and that their joint effect is relevant when explaining entrepreneurial internationalisation. </p