Page - 257 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

Pursuing International Opportunities in aDigitally EnabledWorld Di Song andAiqiWu Abstract Digitalization has tremendously challenged how international opportunities are createdandcaptured. Inspiredby researches in thefieldofbothentrepreneurship and international business, this study provides a comprehensive framework toward the impactofdigital technologies (DTs)onopportunitypursuit in foreign markets.We identify two perspectives of DTs, i.e., DTs as ‘driving force’ and DTs as ‘disrupting force,’which characterize DTs as a catalyst of experiential knowledge acquisition, and as a factor altering the relative significance of experiential knowledge to opportunity pursuit, respectively. By bridging these two perspectives with the notion of market-specific knowledge and general knowledge within internationalization process theory, some arguments with regard towhat specific influencesDTs play on international opportunity pursuit are further introduced.Wehope this study canpotentially offer somenuances to both practitioners aswell as the research in the interaction of digitalization and international opportunity. 1 TheRelevance ofDigitalization to International Opportunity Pursuit It is undeniable that an increasing number offirms pursue international opportu- nities in an era of digitalization. In China, for instance, some leading Internet companies such as Alibaba and Tencent make a profit in the global market. Meanwhile, thousands of manufacturing firms are also dependent upon emerging D. Song (&) A.Wu ZhejiangUniversity, Hangzhou, China e-mail: songdi@zju.edu.cn ©TheAuthor(s) 2021 M.Soltanifar et al. (eds.),DigitalEntrepreneurship, FutureofBusiness andFinance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53914-6_13 265