Entrepreneurial Ecosystems and SMEs internationalization strategies in the digital era

Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (EEs) are at the heart of many European governments strategies to support the internationalization of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs). The reasons are twofold: on one hand SMEs are genuinely woven into the European economic and social fabric and their survival largely depends of their capacity to internationalize. On the other hand, the literature highlights that SMEs access to international markets is facilitated when they belong to an EE. This beneficial relationship can mainly be explained by the fact that internationalization is a relational process and EEs are genuinely rooted in networks. Recent studies however noticed that EEs are not coherent wholes within a region, but are rather active in more complex nested geographies embedded in larger EEs. They are composed of sub-EEs at the regional, national and global level. We refer to them as ‘multi-layered’ nested EEs. They are characterized by multi-scaler interactions and the efficiency of their interactions is intrinsically linked to the orchestration underpinning them. In such contexts, SMEs may benefit from the co-support of these nested EEs while internationalizing, only if their respective resources and networks are orchestrated. However, our understanding of EEs remains incomplete. Digitalization, by rendering broader contexts infrastructural, profoundly transforms the relational and geographical structure as we know it. This raises important questions about the role of EEs and their orchestrators in facilitating the internationalization of SMEs. Therefore, this thesis - composed of 4 articles - explores how digitalization transforms EE’s support to SMEs internationalization. The 1st article explores the literature on the role of EEs in the internationalization of SMEs. Results delineate and document 4 main areas of research, tackling the external and internal conditions for effective EEs that result in strong affordances to support SMEs internationalization. We also learn that the next challenge pertains in understanding how digitalization influences the evolution of spatial affordances and the consequences for SMEs internationalization support. Taking stock on the 1st chapter, the 2nd article focuses on “digital clusters” (DCs). In the literature, DCs have been described as a particular type of EEs that combine both spatial and digital affordances. Building on this concept, we developed a framework to detail how and which characteristics of spatial and digital affordances DCs may leverage synergistically and their effect on SMEs internationalization support. The 3rd chapter examines how EEs orchestration activities are shared among multiple orchestrators to support SMEs internationalization. Six categories of orchestrators emerge based on their respective position in the EEs, their specialization degree and their permanency. Each of them endorses different and/or redundant practices to support the internationalization of SMEs. The 4th and final chapter explores how this shared orchestration mobilizes the potential offered by digital technologies to support the internationalization of SMEs. We unveil that digital technologies support orchestration oriented both inwards and outwards EEs what improves the variety and coherence of orchestrators respective support for SMEs internationalization. The various chapters of this thesis contribute to advancing the multi-layered concept of digital EE, and understanding its shared orchestration as a tool to support the internationalization of SMEs. From a practitioner's perspective, the results provide guidance to policymakers for designing and promoting favorable internationalization policies but also to SMEs for selecting and engaging in favorable EEs.