Dear friends and colleagues,
Here are some papers forthcoming in future issues of Global Strategy Journal on global innovation/digital strategy. You can access other papers accepted but not yet published in an issue at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/20425805/0/0.
We look forward to receiving your best work for consideration for publication.
Best wishes,
Gabriel R. G. Benito, Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra, and Grazia Santangelo
Co-editors of Global Strategy Journal
Navigating the paradox of global scaling
Esther Tippmann, Sinéad Monaghan, Rebecca A. Reuber
Much global strategy research explores the management of competing strategic demands. Although these demands vary by a firm's context, the focus has been largely on established long-lived multinational enterprises (MNEs) that are not based on digital technologies. There is thus a need to extend theory to take into account the co-existence of rapid growth and digitization, a condition which is increasingly prominent. This study of globally scaling digital firms shows that they navigate the paradoxical demands of replication, to achieve frictionless rapid growth, and entrepreneurship, to innovate and remain competitive. We provide a theoretical model, which shows how MNEs navigate this global scaling paradox through a virtuous cycle of identifying innovations that can be replicated. Surprisingly, given the ease of modifying digital products and services, navigating the global scaling paradox involves minimizing local responsiveness, which is regarded as antithetical to replication. This research also builds insights on the global strategies of digital firms.
Arto Ojala, Sara Fraccastoro, Mika Gabrielsson
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.
Maximilian Stallkamp, Liang Chen, Sali Li
Recent global strategy research on born digital firms (i.e., firms with digital products distributed through digital channels) has paid only limited attention to the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the internationalization of such firms. We argue that exploiting digital technologies requires a range of complementary, non-digital resources. Born digitals typically deploy FDI when large cultural and geographic distances limit the fungibility and scalability of such complementary resources, leading to a positive relationship between distance (cultural and geographic) and FDI. The positive distance effect is moderated by business model type. Using a sample of US-based born digital firms with over 800 FDIs, we find support for our hypotheses and contribute an important empirical baseline to recent discussions of digitalization in global strategy.
Georgios Batsakis, Palitha Konara, Vasilis Theoharakis
We argue that in the era of e-commerce, retail firms can simultaneously grow their product and international portfolio by adopting a multichannel strategy, that is, using digital and physical channels. Drawing on the resource bundling perspective, we argue that the previously advocated negative relationship between product and international diversification is mitigated by the retail firm's digital sales intensity. By separately examining product and international diversification across digital and physical channels, we find that while increased product diversification in physical channels relates negatively with international diversification in both physical and digital channels, increased product diversification in digital channels relates positively with international diversification in both channels. Our hypotheses are tested against a sample of 122 born physical - going digital retail MNEs over the period 2006–2016.
Jens-Christian Friedmann, Torben Pedersen
International alliances facilitate learning among firms by providing access to knowledge embedded in different countries, yet we do not know how the partnering firms' distinct national contexts shape their learning in alliances. This study brings together research on learning in alliances and research on national innovation systems to examine how innovation policies in the respective home countries of the focal firms and their partners can increase the effectiveness of knowledge acquisition in alliances. Our analyses indicate that supply-side innovation policies in the focal firms' home countries and demand-side policies in their partners' home countries increase the focal firms' knowledge acquisition from their partners.
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Alvaro CUERVO-CAZURRA
Professor, International Business and Strategy, Northeastern University
Co-editor, Global Strategy Journal
a.cuervocazurra@neu.edu.
www.cuervo-cazurra.com.------------------------------