What Can We Learn from User Entrepreneurs? Systematic Review, Synthesis, and Propositions

Abstract

Interest in how innovative users initiate venture business and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities is growing. Many researchers have investigated this phenomenon by using different kinds of research questions, methodologies, and data. These various studies, on the one hand, reflected the generality of the phenomenon of user entrepreneur, but on the other hand, they may simultaneously distract people from understanding what the user entrepreneur study is really about. To reduce this unpleasant side-effect and to find the common key concepts among different user entrepreneur studies, we made a systematic literature review and a synthesis of different ideas. Furthermore, to make these concepts clearer and more familiar to the researchers in the area of innovation and entrepreneurship, we compared these concepts with the popular wisdom of Schumpeter, Kirzner, Knight, and, Roberts. By doing so, we found that existing user entrepreneur study is centering on four concepts: uncertainty reduction, collaboration, user community as a career departure point, and positive factors motivating exploitation decision. Although there are evident limitations in our study, such as insufficient review of traditional wisdom about entrepreneur(ship), this paper clearly depicted what the user entrepreneur study is mainly about; and provided four propositions which are valuable for future researchers to investigate in more details.