Introduction to the Special Issue: “The age of digital internationalization—Strategic capabilities, cultural distance and customer value”

Abstract

This article develops a more fine-grained understanding of the relevant interfaces between firm digitalization and internationalization. Based on the close observation of the peculiarities of the digital age and its effects on the application of the extant international business theories and approaches, as well as the content of the papers contained in this issue, we take the view of “digital internationalization”. We provide an original definition for digital internationalization and introduce a digital internationalization interpretive framework encompassing its three key constituents (i.e., strategic capabilities, cultural distance and customer value) and the unifying mechanism (i.e., generativity rule) to achieve firms’ digital internationalization. This framework bears, in our understanding, a bouquet of implications helpful not only to scholars and researchers, but also to managers, entrepreneurs, consultants and investors operating in profit and non-profit organizations.