Chapter 1: Introduction
Setting the stage for AI-Native transformation in international entrepreneurship
Introduction: Setting the Stage for AI-Native Transformation
1.1. The New Frontier: AI for International Entrepreneurship
Internationalization is widely recognized as the pinnacle of growth for successful enterprises. Following decades of development, the proliferation of digital technologies alongside a globalized economy has increasingly democratized International Venture Creation (IVC), making it accessible to smaller-scale businesses and early-stage entrepreneurs from their inception.
Persistent Barriers to Internationalization:
Before the decision to go global, limited resources impede the identification of suitable cross-border partners. During the decision-making process, insufficient cross-cultural cognition and lack of trusted expert endorsement weaken strategic choices. After the decision, businesses face substantial challenges in launching, managing, and monitoring international operations.
While frameworks like Lean Startup and Effectuation have been extended to international contexts, they often fall short in offering practical, actionable guidance for achieving early and rapid internationalization. Similarly, dominant models of digital and platform-dependent entrepreneurship remain overly homogeneous, limiting their applicability to the varied and complex contexts of international entrepreneurship.
The recent advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as an entrepreneurial external enabler has garnered considerable attention. Specifically for IE, AI's advanced generative capabilities for high-quality translation and nuanced content localization offer inherent suitability for cross-cultural tasks previously characterized by substantial expense and operational difficulty.
Research Questions
This research, initiated by an experienced IE practitioner, is conducted specifically for and with AI to address the identified challenges. Guided by a Design Science Research (DSR) methodology, the study formulates three key research questions:
RQ1 (Contextual):
To what extent can an AI-centric international venturing paradigm, embedded within a servitized expertise economy, effectively mitigate persistent resource, cognitive, and delegation challenges in international entrepreneurship?
RQ2 (Conceptual):
What mechanisms underpin a virtuous human-AI co-creation framework that ensures efficiency, sensemaking, and trustworthiness in international entrepreneurship contexts?
RQ3 (Methodological):
What role can AI play in the participatory and simulative approaches of design-oriented research processes?
The Proposed Solution
The DSR process, guided by these questions, led to the conceptualization of an Expertise-as-a-Service (EaaS) model as a new economic framework for IE. To enable this Human-AI value co-creation ecosystem, a conceptual framework for a Symbiotic Accord System (SAS) was proposed, centered on autonomous orchestration via AI Attachés representing Human Principals.
SAS-AM: Auto-Matching
Intelligent matching of expertise supply and demand
SAS-SA: Smart-Assembling
Dynamic assembly of expert teams for complex challenges
SAS-CR: Crowd-Reasoning
Collective intelligence for decision validation
Next: Continue to Chapter 2: Theoretical Foundations to explore the academic grounding of SAS and EaaS.