Supporting SMEs’ internationalization through entrepreneurial ecosystems orchestration in a digital era

Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (EEs) and their orchestrators are recognized as supportive of SMEs internationalization by playing on SMEs network embeddedness. While digitalization reshapes SMEs internationalization trajectories, fuels the rise of nested entrepreneurial ecosystems, and encourages the dispersion of orchestrators, the way it transforms EEs’ orchestrators’ agency in supporting SMEs internationalization remains underexplored. To address the above research gap, we conducted an embedded qualitative case study centred on a (digitally) mature EE, composed of 7 orchestrators, active in 3 nested sub-EEs. We find that digital technologies support both inward and outward-oriented orchestration agency, through interaction and learning conditions phygitalization, inter-EE modularization and orchestration, and distributed international tie activation. By unpacking these three mechanisms associated to three network embeddedness dynamics driven by EEs digital orchestration, we enrich and extend the Network Theory of Internationalization, and contribute to reconsider EEs orchestration in the digital era.