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

Abstract

Research SummaryCurrent 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 SummaryWhat 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.

Learning from artificial intelligence researchers about international business implications

“…Therefore, we maintain that it enables entrepreneurs to modify the structure of AI systems and their original functions (Ojala et al, 2023;Rahwan et al, 2019). Hence, how do international new ventures utilize the re-programmability features of AI to facilitate expansion to new industries and foreign markets?…”

“…Recent IB research recognizes that specific characteristics of technological artifacts profoundly impact the internationalization of digitalbased ventures (Ojala et al, 2018(Ojala et al, , 2023 and the global expansion strategies of large firms (Autio et al, 2021). Therefore, IB researchers can take a micro foundational lens focusing on technological artifacts of AI.…”

“…We comprehend research opportunities of AI at the intersection of the international expansion of firms on five fronts. Second, the global strategy literature identified several features of technological artifacts-one is related to AI, which is reprogrammability (Autio et al, 2021;Ojala et al, 2023). It refers to the openness and extent to which AI is modifiable for new purposes by entrepreneurs or firms.…”

Managing artificial intelligence in international business: Toward a research agenda on sustainable production and consumption

“…This combinative approach of AI helps managers to create entirely new functionality enabled by different configurations of new capabilities (as modules) to be added into the systems or architectures. A recent development on the characteristics of digital artifacts in IB argues that digital artifacts can be reprogrammed to facilitate dynamic capabilities in international expansion (Ojala et al, 2023). Similarly, AI literature indicates that each module of AI architecture can be modified or discrete if necessary to achieve its desired functionalities (Rahwan et al, 2019).…”

Networks of internationalizing digital platforms in physical place and digital space

“…The recent global trend of digitalization has embraced this idea of "borderlessness" and developed it further due to its role in dramatically changing where, and how, international firms build network relations (Furr et al, 2022;Ojala et al, 2023;Sigfusson & Chetty, 2013;Stallkamp & Schotter, 2021;Zeng, 2022). In this context, Banalieva andDhanaraj (2019, p. 1383) stipulate that "digitalization alters the concept of the market from a common physical space for buyer-seller interactions … to a data-rich environment that buyers and suppliers cocreate through new digital technologies."…”