Abstract: The emergence of digital windows of opportunity not only provides international new ventures (INVs) with opportunities to catch up rapidly in the global market, but also generates brand-new opportunities for them to overtake competitors and “take the lead”. However, existing research has not yet explored in depth the issue of strategic rhythm selection for such enterprises to develop digital windows of opportunity. This paper selects four INVs that have successfully seized digital windows of opportunity as research objects, and constructs a theoretical model matching digital windows of opportunity with strategic rhythms on the basis of analyzing the characteristics of windows of opportunity. The research findings are as follows: (1) From the perspective of opportunity transformation, based on the two dimensions of “innovation type” and “core resource”, the digital windows of opportunity faced by INVs are divided into four types, namely “internal-exploitative”, “external-exploitative”, “internal-exploratory” and “external-exploratory”; (2) For different types of digital windows of opportunity, INVs adopt four strategic rhythms, namely “gradual breakthrough”, “synchronous adaptation”, “flexible orchestration” and “high-frequency shaping”, to carry out opportunity transformation, and smoothly promote the implementation of strategic rhythms by virtue of the organic combination of two strategic actions: digital connection and resource integration; (3) In the process of the coordinated combination of digital connection and resource integration, INVs mainly release the effectiveness of the action combination through two mechanisms: “enhanced complementarity” and “collaborative integration”. The theoretical framework finally formed in this paper is of great theoretical significance for understanding the unique international expansion behaviors of INVs in the context of digital globalization, and responds to the call of scholars in the field of international business to expand the research on the internationalization behaviors of new ventures in the digital era.

Key words: INVs, digital opportunity window, strategic rhythm, digital connectivity, resource integration