This chapter examines the business strategies adopted by transnational digital entrepreneurship (TDE) through the lens of immigrant, transnational, digital entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial ecosystem theories and practices. The chapter focuses on how transnational digital entrepreneurs deploy integrated strategies in the TDE process. The chapter argues proactive growth strategies and ecosystem strategies play critical structural roles in the TDE. This case study interviewed 12 Chinese transnational digital entrepreneurs in New Zealand and Australia. The results of qualitative data analysis show that transnational digital entrepreneurs rely on the resources and opportunities provided by both host and home country entrepreneurial ecosystems, and digital entrepreneurial ecosystem plays a transnational bridging role for these entrepreneurs. The results also demonstrate that the traditional immigrant entrepreneurial strategies, transnational strategies, and digital strategies have been integrated and adopted by these transnational digital entrepreneurs.
TopIntroduction
In the last four decades, digital transformation has happened in many advanced economies. The focus of government policies and academic interests has shifted from large enterprises to SMEs, from effective operation management to digital transformation, and from existing business study to entrepreneurship research (Jurado & Battisti, 2019). Nowadays, there is a universal acknowledgement of the significance of digital entrepreneurship (DE) in achieving socioeconomic advancement (Sahut, Luca, & Frédéric, 2019). DE has advanced to a state where it is an entirely new area of research enquiry within the field of interdisciplinary entrepreneurship (Nambisan, 2017) as studied through information systems (Du & Li, 2018), economics (Richter, Kraus, Brem, Durst, & Giselbrecht, 2017), management, innovation (Nambisan, 2017), policy, education (Li, Liu, Zhang, & Li, 2017; Sandhu, 2009, 2008), strategy and sociology, in conjunction with other entrepreneurship disciplines (Zaheer, Breyer, & Dumay, 2019).
Another phenomenon that has been well-recognized is that contemporary immigrants have firm intentions to pursue transnational entrepreneurship with a high success rate (Kerr & Kerr, 2020). To explain the phenomenon, for the last two decades, researchers have developed some new positions beyond the traditional host country-oriented immigrant entrepreneurship (IE) theories (Brzozowski, Cucculelli, & Surdej, 2017; Portes & Yiu, 2013). These positions include brain circulation (Saxenian, 2005), knowledge spillover (Li, Isidor, Dau, & Kabst, 2018; OECD, 2010), cultural (ethnic) diversity (Alesina & Eliana, 2005; Audretsch, Dohse, & Niebuhr, 2010), cross-border activities (Emontspool & Servais, 2017; McDougall & Oviat, 2000) or transnationalism (Lin & Tao, 2012; Drori, Honig, & Wright, 2009), and “social network” or “transnational ties” (Brzozowski et al., 2017). All these new theories built up the foundation of transnational entrepreneurship (TE).
DE has been defined within various disciplinary contexts including internet entrepreneurship, cyber entrepreneurship (Elia, Margherita, & Passiante, 2020), information and communication technologies (ICT) entrepreneurship (Steininger, 2019; Bogdanowicz, 2015). These definitions have been used without restriction by scholars, as DE has expanded beyond national borders. This research focuses on digital entrepreneurial strategies in the context of transnational entrepreneurship (TE). It adopts the European Commission’s (2016) definition, in which DE was broadly defined as new venture creation or transforming the existing organization through novel ICT innovation and/or novel usage of such innovation. The research samples are narrowed to transnational entrepreneurs who adopt digital technologies as business strategies.
TE has become a dominant research stream in the entrepreneurship discipline in the last two decades (Portes et al., 2002) along with growing international immigration, globalization and increased international trade. A widely accepted concept of transnational entrepreneurs is “social actors who enact networks, ideas, information, and practices for the purpose of seeking business opportunities or maintaining businesses within dual social fields, which in turn force them to engage in varied strategies of action to promote their entrepreneurial activities” (Drori et al., 2009, p1001). Yeung (2002, p37) further defined that transnational entrepreneurs are “capable of bearing risks in terms of capital investment and taking strategic initiatives to establish, integrate, and sustain foreign operations based on the skills of the immigrants.” The cross-border economic activities conducted by entrepreneurs based on the usage of digital technology (i.e., cross-border e-commerce platforms) are defined as transnational digital entrepreneurship (TDE), and these entrepreneurs are transnational digital entrepreneurs.
Although DE and TE have garnered significant research interest recently, there is a shortage of research on TDE as to what underpins the nature and characteristics for such activities internationally. A Google Scholar search shows no document devoted to studying transnational digital entrepreneurs. This paper tries to fill this gap by analyzing the TDE process from a business strategy perspective within a transnational digital entrepreneurial ecosystem which comprises the home and host country entrepreneurial ecosystems of entrepreneurs and the boundary-less digital ecosystem which bridges the two entrepreneurial ecosystems. The paper addresses the following key research questions: 1) What entrepreneurial and digital strategies do/should transnational digital entrepreneurs adopt in TDE? 2) What business strategies do/should transnational digital entrepreneurs deploy to take the benefits of ecosystems?