Internationalization theory of digital platform firms - d-oli advantages

The aim of this paper is to explore the internationalization of digital platform firms, in particular to investigate the advantages digital platform firms build during the internationalization journey which helps them overcome liability of foreignness. More importantly, drawing on Luo’s framework of new OLI advantages, i.e., open resource, linkage, and integration advantages, a new framework of Digital OLI (D-OLI) advantages for the digital platform firms is developed. Digital platform firms from the emerging economy of India, being a lesser researched area, this study adopts a multi case method to empirically understand their internationalization phenomenon of 12 Indian headquartered digital platform firms. Several novel open resource and linkage advantages were identified for digital platform firms which are not covered by the new OLI advantages proposed by Luo. Further, a new I advantage which is information and knowledge advantage has evolved from the data. This resulted in enhancing the scope of new OLI framework and further enabled us to develop the D-OLI framework, a new framework for digital platform firms which reflects the specific advantages a digital platform firm builds during internationalization.