Scaling and scalability in volatile global markets: an exploratory study of rapidly internationalizing Finnish SMEs

While small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) appear to have the resources and skills to scale their operations for international growth, something is holding them back. We investigate how SMEs navigate through international scaling challenges via an exploratory case study of 12 Finnish SMEs representing diverse industries. The findings from interviews and secondary data indicate that the development of a scalable product or service offering balancing between overall efficiency and customer-specific adaptation is an international scaling prerequisite. International scaling requires an entrepreneurial team able to coordinate rapid growth internally and within the network, secure sufficient finance, support knowledge transfer and nurture an entrepreneurial company culture within the boundary conditions, including volatile and immature global markets, unlimited demand and competition over best talent and finance. Our study contributes by assessing scaling as a multidimensional, contextual, temporal and nonlinear SME expansion process and by bringing conceptual clarity to scaling within international entrepreneurship literature.