Digital entrepreneurship ecosystem: How digital technologies and collective intelligence are reshaping the entrepreneurial process

Abstract

Digital technologies have nowadays a significant impact on how new business ventures are imagined and created. The arising technology paradigm is leveraging the potential of collaboration and collective intelligence to design and launch more robust and sustainable entrepreneurial initiatives. However, although the topic of digital entrepreneurship is relevant and timely, there is a limited literature discussion on the real impact of digital technologies and collaboration on the entrepreneurial process. Further research is needed to describe the nature and characteristics of the entrepreneurial ecosystem enabled by the new socio-technical paradigm. Based on extant literature, this article proposes a definition of digital entrepreneurship ecosystem by highlighting the integrated digital-output and digital-environment perspectives. A collective intelligence approach is then adopted to define a descriptive framework and identify the distinguishing genes of a digital entrepreneurship ecosystem. Four dimensions associated to digital actors (who), digital activities (what), digital motivations (why), and digital organization (how) are defined and discussed. The framework was also applied to describe 9 real cases of companies and initiatives, which are analyzed as digital entrepreneurship ecosystems along the four key dimensions presented. The article ends with a discussion about the results and a research agenda for future studies.