Effectual logic of international entrepreneurs in digital platform environments

Due to globalization and the ongoing transformation towards a highly digitalized environment, international new ventures increasingly face dynamic and rapidly changing ecosystems. Resultingly international entrepreneurs are in close contact with dynamic digital platform constructs that impact today’s B2B and B2C markets on many levels. International entrepreneurs encounter uncertainty and an unpredictably fast changing future in this network- based environment, but at the same time explore novelty and a wide range of opportunities. This thesis aims to explore how the international entrepreneur’s decision-making, concretely under the perspective of effectual logic, is abled to navigate through the dynamic nature of fast changing digital platform environments. The theoretical framework of this thesis builds upon a wide range of literature discussing effectuation, digital platforms and their shared conjunction in the international context. Effectuation and digital platforming are concepts that emerged within the last 30 years and showed a significant increase in relevance as today’s globalized and digitalized economy facilitates their growth and interplay. The concepts have been discussed increasingly over the last years, while the conjunction of effectual decision making by international entrepreneurs in digital platform environments has not been discussed sufficiently. In order to observe the resulting interplay, this master’s thesis carries out a qualitative study that observed three German based international new ventures through semi structured interviews. While observing international entrepreneurs in dynamic platform environments, factors such as agility, dynamism and reactiveness seem to play a huge role in the effectual decision-making process. Big tech platforms, in conjunction with the innovative power by small high-tech companies, create an unpredictably fast changing environment that is globally connected and forces international entrepreneurs to consistently adapt their assumptions about the future. Opportunities and solutions to start new ventures are largely enabled by big tech platforms, while competition between entrepreneurs is also accelerated. The resulting environment of an interconnected digital platform - INV ecosystem - brings a wide range of novelty, innovation as well as dependency that selects only the fittest and most agile companies