Many SMEs aim for business development by diversifying their offerings to fit global markets. However, internationalization has consequences for all aspects of a company's business model. Even though internationalization poses many business model challenges, the recent development of digital technology is a key enabler of resource-efficient internationalization and business development, an innovation that SMEs find accommodating. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to analyze how digitalization can help to surmount the business model challenges associated with SME internationalization. This paper builds on an exploratory case study of 29 SMEs who have an internationalization strategy and are from sparsely populated areas in Finland and Sweden. For the data analysis, the first-order codes of different business model challenges of SME internationalization have been merged into second-order themes. The final step of the analysis involved ascertaining the overarching dimensions of these business model challenges. This paper identifies business model challenges related to value creation, delivery, and capture throughout the internationalization process. In addition, a framework is developed that matches digitalization activities with the business model challenges. Because there is no “one fits all” solution, this study matches specific digitalization activities with business model challenges that SMEs face when attempting to operate in international markets. These findings are important because they dissect digitalization into executable activities that SMEs find manageable.

许多中小企业的目标是通过提供多样化的产品以适应全球市场来发展业务。然而，国际化对公司商业模式的各个方面都有影响。尽管国际化带来了许多商业模式挑战，但数字技术的最新发展是资源节约型国际化和业务发展的关键推动力，这是中小企业发现的创新。因此，本文的目的是分析数字化如何帮助克服与中小企业国际化相关的商业模式挑战。本文基于对 29 家具有国际化战略且来自芬兰和瑞典人口稀少地区的中小企业的探索性案例研究。对于数据分析，中小企业国际化的不同商业模式挑战的一阶代码已合并为二阶主题。分析的最后一步涉及确定这些商业模式挑战的总体维度。本文确定了在整个国际化过程中与价值创造、交付和获取相关的商业模式挑战。此外，还开发了一个框架，将数字化活动与商业模式挑战相匹配。由于没有“一刀切”的解决方案，本研究将特定的数字化活动与中小企业在尝试在国际市场运营时面临的商业模式挑战相匹配。这些发现很重要，因为它们将数字化分解为中小企业认为可以管理的可执行活动。