Embracing entrepreneurship in the creator economy: The rise of creatrepreneurs

Abstract

The creator economy has led to profound transformations in the way that individuals—content creators—produce and deliver digital content, how they create and appropriate value from such content, and how they grow careers in venturing such content creation. However, despite the industry’s economic significance, the conceptualization of content creators as entrepreneurs remains underexplored. This paper aims to bridge this gap by exploring creators from an entrepreneurial perspective along a creatrepreneur model. Based on an extensive review of academic research, industry reports, as well as eight expert interviews with diverse stakeholders within the creator economy ecosystem, the article defines the scope of creators’ entrepreneurial activities, offers a taxonomy of creator venture models, and develops a framework of key drivers of entrepreneurial success within the creator economy, encompassing both environmental and individual success factors. Building on this conceptualization, this paper further identifies potential avenues for future research in the creator economy, focusing on entrepreneurial strategies in building creator ventures and evaluating their key success factors, and concludes by highlighting empirical challenges in exploring these directions.