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This study aims to focus on a key unanswered question about how digitalization and the knowledge processes it enables affect firms’ strategies in the international arena.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering over 20 years of research (from 2000 to 2023) and including 73 journal papers.

This review allows us to highlight a relationship between firms’ international strategies and the knowledge processes enabled by applying digital technologies. Specifically, the authors discuss the characteristics of patterns of knowledge flows and knowledge processes (their origin, the type of knowledge they carry on and their directionality) as determinants for the emergence of diverse international strategies embraced by single firms or by populations of firms within ecosystems, networks, global value chains or alliances.

Despite digital technologies constituting important antecedents and critical factors for the internationalization process, and international businesses in general, and operating cross borders implies the enactment of highly knowledge-intensive processes, current literature still fails to provide a holistic picture of how firms strategically use what they know and seek out what they do not know in the international environment, using the affordances of digital technologies.

Technology-enabled business-to-business (B2B) services contribute the largest share to GDP growth and are fundamental for an economy’s value creation. This article aims to identify key service- and digital technology-driven B2B innovation modes and proposes a research agenda for further exploration.

This conceptual paper adopts a techno-demarcation view on service innovation, encompassing three core dimensions: service offering (the service product, or the “what”), service process (the “how”) and service ecosystem (the “who/for whom”). It delineates the implications of three digital technologies – the internet-of-things (IoT), intelligent automation (IA) and digital platforms – for service innovation across these core dimensions in B2B markets.

Digital technology has immense potential ramifications for value creation by reshaping all three core dimensions of service innovation. Specifically, IoT can transform physical resources into reconfigurable service products, IA can augment and automate a rapidly expanding array of service processes, while digital platforms provide the technical and organizational infrastructure for the integration of resources and stakeholders within service ecosystems.

This study suggests an agenda with six themes for further research, each linked to one or more of the three service innovation dimensions. They are (1) new recurring revenue models, (2) service innovation in the metaverse, (3) scaling up service innovations, (4) ecosystem innovations, (5) power dependency and lock-in effects and (6) security and responsibility in digital domains.

Belonging to the financial technologies’ companies, equity-based crowdfunding platforms offer investors the opportunity to become shareholders through the purchase of small equity stakes of new innovative ventures. This paper aims to investigate gender-related differences in the behaviour of investors in firms seeking equity financing in Latin America.

Using a unique database, with combined information from different equity crowdfunding platforms in Brazil, Chile and Mexico, the authors study the population of 492 projects between 2013 and 2017. To analyse the relationship between investors’ gender-related differences and equity crowdfunding investment, this paper applies Poisson regression.

Results suggest that the probability that an investor finances a firm is based on gender bias. Investors prefer firms led by entrepreneurs that are similar to them in terms of gender. Furthermore, the authors find evidence that both female and male investors are risk-averse and are more likely to invest in the equity of firms that are older and offer a higher percentage of equity. However, female investors are associated with firms that are on average older and offer 0.02% more equity.

These findings have implications for crowdfunding platforms managers when selecting their target companies and policymakers when defining political actions to promote greater use of equity crowdfunding among female entrepreneurs and decrease barriers hindering women’s access to investment.

Unique in its proposition and data usage, this study sheds light on the relationship between investors and entrepreneurs in the Latin American equity crowdfunding market.

This paper aims to provide a survey of existing literature on the economic impacts of the internet on firm development, and outlines an overall framework of the existing studies. The purpose is to show how the internet affects firm development, which may help policymakers and other researchers to have a better knowledge of existing research characteristics, problems and future directions.

The authors review the studies on the economic impacts of the internet on firm characteristics and external environment, identify the characteristics of the existing literature and problems and discuss the directions of possible future research.

The authors find that the impacts of the internet on firm development mainly display two relevant mechanisms (firm characteristics and external environment), and they can be grouped into six channels (firm innovation, firm business mode, firm performance, firm productivity, firm import and export trade and firm location selection).

This study builds up a framework of how the internet impacts on firm development, which can add value to the future research of firm intelligent transaction modes in the crowd intelligence network.

With the rapid development of the digital economy, an increasing number of digitalized two-sided platforms have deployed the tying strategy to leverage their market power from the core two-sided product to other two-sided products in the competitive market, which transforms the competition among single platforms into that among platform ecological networks. To clarify the mechanism of the formation of the digital platform ecological networks, this paper aims to analyze the expansion and stability of platform ecology by exploring the impacts of network externalities and sellers’ heterogeneity on the tying strategy of two-sided platforms.

This paper develops a game model of two-sided platforms based on Choi and Jeon (2021), which highlights the decisive influence of non-negative price constraints (NPC) on platforms’ tying motivation. Taking the operating systems market as an example, we expand from the perspective of platform service differences to relax the NPC and explore the internal logic of platform ecosystem expansion.

Platforms have an incentive to charge lower prices or even subsidize buyers when the network externalities on the sellers’ side are relatively strong. When the product is highly differentiated and heterogenous, platforms are motivated to tie to capture more buyers with a lower price and grab excess profits from sellers. Eventually, tying is able to consolidate the two-sided platform ecological networks by excluding competitors, capturing user value and deterring entry.

In order to describe the characteristics of platform ecological network more generally, this paper extends the research based on the analyses of Choi and Jeon (2021) by (1) allowing horizontal differences between tied products and (2) relaxing the NPC. Unlike Choi and Jeon (2021), this paper allows platforms to charge users of two-sided platforms at negative prices (or to subsidize them). (3) Setting simultaneous pricing in two-sided platforms. Classical two-sided market theory stresses that the presence of cross-network externalities can give rise to a “chicken and egg” problem.

This paper provides remarkable insight into the structural components of a firm's core competence and its development via research and development (R&D) activities for innovation and exporting activities.

The authors have used a positivist design and a deductive methodology. The authors have examined the extant literature developing a theoretical framework to empirically investigate the relationships between a firm's core competence, organisational learning (OL), tacitness, dynamic capability and R&D activities. To carry out this investigation, the authors have collected stratified sample data from 330 firms operating in North East England, a peripheral region of England.

The authors have found that there are indeed significant statistical relationships between these structural components, R&D activities and a firm's core competence, and this nexus is pertinent to innovation and exporting. Furthermore, it is found that North East England is significantly constrained by the lack of finance, technological capability, experts and brain drain. Based on these findings, the authors propose a cooperative R&D framework to narrow down these constraints to assist firms in developing core competencies for innovation and exporting in peripheral regions.

There is an urgent need to investigate the incidence of knowledge-driven activities, R&D, the extent of innovation and exporting activities of firms operating in North East England, a peripheral region of the United Kingdom (UK).

This study provides an original and systematic investigation of the firm's core competence and its formation via key structural components for innovation and exporting within an empirical framework.

The purpose of this article is to explore how corporate strategies have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A wide array of literature has been surveyed. Also, several senior executives have been interviewed. And two senior management counterparts have provided inputs. The approach taken is thus exploratory and pre-paradigmatic. This sets the stage for potential empirical investigations.

There seems to be a clear shift towards more web-based inputs regarding the way corporations are executing their strategies. Surprisingly shorter-term strategy implementation seems to be rather effective. More fundamental shifts in strategies, however, seem to depend a lot on executives' abilities to travel, and this have been severely curtailed.

The propositions that are stated in the paper have not been tested empirically. This sets clear limitations regarding generalizability.

It seems important to strengthen firms' capabilities regarding distance-driven strategic execution, as well as strengthened cash flow management.

There seems to be a clear shift towards more nationalization, and a slowing-down of globalization.

While many of the findings might be seen as rather self-evident, there is nevertheless originality in the way that COVID-19's impact on firms' strategies has been analysed.

The Chinese market represents an increasingly popular destination for wine firms and recent opportunities derive from the growth of e-commerce. The aim of this paper is to understand the impact of digital platforms on wine firms' internationalisation in China by adopting the service ecosystems approach.

The authors carried out a case study of Italian premium wine firms from the Valpolicella area by collecting 27 semi-structured interviews with key informants that operate at the micro-, meso- and macro-levels of the internationalisation ecosystem. Italian wine firms were selected as the focus of the analysis, given the recent sales growth of their products in the Chinese market.

Results show that digital platforms hold a key role in the wine firms' internationalisation in China, intervening with resource integration mechanisms, alignment to the cultural context and mediating firms' digital presence in the market. The platformisation dynamics also reveal the existence of enablers and constraints in the firm internationalisation through digital platforms.

The authors aim to contribute to the marketing literature by analysing how digital platforms influence the wine firms' internationalisation in China through an original perspective, i.e. the service ecosystems lens.

The study adopts the service ecosystems approach to understand the internationalisation of wine firms in the Chinese market through digital platforms.

The game plan firms must navigate in the quest of competitive advantage which is changing quickly. More and more firms acknowledge that future prosperity depends on achieving the joint goals of economic, environmental and social sustainability. This understanding has resulted in both firms and actors on the financial markets enhancing their focus on environmental, social and governance dimensions in their respective decision-making processes. In this chapter, the focus is on one key component of the changing game plan, the European Union’s (EU) Sustainable Finance Platform that envisions investors as a key driver of firms’ sustainability transformation. Based on survey data from Swedish listed firms, we discuss implications and outcomes of the Platform. Our results show that investors play an important role in setting the rules of the gameplan for firms. However, not to the extent that it meets the ambitions of the policymakers. This suggests either that the Platform will fail to meet its aims or that firms should expect further significant changes to the gameplan in the future.

The purpose of this article is to study what platform-related user factors influence the employment potential of a lean platform for self-employed professionals.

The article employs the system data of a Dutch platform firm, which include consumers looking for painters (N = 17,224) and self-employed painters (N = 1,752) who pursue client acquisition by submitting proposals (N = 101,974). This data is analysed using non-parametric tests.

Study of this platform shows that the platform functions as a channel of acquisition for self-employed professionals. This lean platform enables matching of information of supply and demand, thereby facilitating processes of acquisition. The number of competitors, distance to a potential job and non-standard proposals are statistically significant factors that influence whether a consumer is interested in a proposal. Effect sizes are very small.

This platform is a two-way market for information about service jobs, which excludes a price setting mechanism. The findings of this study cannot be generalized to other forms of platforms.

The market for service professionals is very local; therefore, the platform firm may alter the algorithm to accommodate this. Self-employed professionals should approach using the platform in the same way as normal forms of acquisition.

This particular type of two-sided market is an extension of regular forms of acquisition by creating “weak ties” through the platform.

The article uses a unique data set to study the impact and limitations of digitalization of the (labour) market for service professionals.