Summary Entrepreneurship Theory & Digital Innovation

Table of contents

Week 1..............................................................................................................................................2
1.1 Nambisan, S. (2017). Digital Entrepreneurship: Toward a Digital Technology Perspective of
Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 41(6), 1029-1055.....................................2
Week 2..............................................................................................................................................6
2.1 Chapter 3 and 4 of Fossen, F. M., McLemore, T., & Sorgner, A. (2024). Artificial Intelligence and
Entrepreneurship. IZA Discussion Paper, 17055..................................................................................6
Week 3............................................................................................................................................11
3.1 Yoo, Y., Henfridsson, O., & Lyytinen, K. (2010). Research Commentary—The New Organizing
Logic of Digital Innovation: An Agenda for Information Systems Research......................................12
3.2 Hund, A., Wagner, H.-T., Beimborn, D., & Weitzel, T. (2021). Digital innovation: Review and
novel perspective..............................................................................................................................15
3.3 Yoo, Y., Henfridsson, O., Kallinikos, J., Gregory, R., Burtch, G., Chatterjee, S., & Sarker, S. (2024).
The Next Frontiers of Digital Innovation Research. Information Systems Research, 35(4)................17
3.4 Digital disruption and artificial intelligence................................................................................17
Week 4............................................................................................................................................18
4.1 Bendig, D., Wagner, R., Piening, E., & Nils Foege, J. (2023). Attention to Digital Innovation:
Exploring the Impact of a Chief Information Officer in the Top Management Team........................19
4.2 Park, Y., & Mithas, S. (2020). Organized Complexity of Digital Business Strategy: A
Configurational Perspective..............................................................................................................19
4.3 Ambidexterity.............................................................................................................................20
Example exam question...................................................................................................................22

,Week 1
1.1 Nambisan, S. (2017). Digital Entrepreneurship: Toward a Digital Technology Perspective of
Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 41(6), 1029-1055
Digital innovation = the use of digital technology during the process of innovating. Digital innovation
can also be described as the creation of market offerings, business processes, or models that result
from the use of digital technology. In digital innovation, digital technologies form an inherent part of
the new idea and/or its development, diffusion, or absorption.

Entrepreneurship = the discovery and exploitation of lucrative opportunities. Opportunities are:

- Goods, services, and processes that can be introduced and sold at greater (value) than their
cost of production.
- Opportunities are objective (identification process is subjective).
- People hold different beliefs about the value of opportunities.
- Heterogeneity (e.g. specific capabilities) allow some individuals and not others to act on
certain opportunities.
Entrepreneurship does not require (but can include) the creation of new organizations. It depends on
who discovers and who exploits opportunities (do not need to be the same).

Entrepreneurial opportunities are often introduced by new firms, because large firms:

- Fail to recognize a new technology (due to established product range).
- Fail to give it ‘full speed’.
- Fail to balance the ‘mainstream’ and the ‘newstream’.
Digital entrepreneurship = the intersection of digital technologies and entrepreneurship.

Digital technologies have led to less bounded entrepreneurial outcomes and processes:

 Outcomes = structural boundaries of the product product/service, such as the features,
scope, and market reach of an offering.
 Processes = spatial and temporal boundaries of entrepreneurial activities, for example when
and where activities are carried out.
There are two models of entrepreneurship:

 Traditional entrepreneurship model  assumes stable and fixed boundaries around an
opportunity, meaning that a new product or service idea is treated as a fixed and discrete
outcome. In this case, success is often defined in terms of how well an entrepreneur
executes the associated, well-defined business plan.
 Examples: local bakery, craft brewery, Starbucks, Tony’s Chocolonely  these
companies do not have much room to change their value proposition (product).
 Digital entrepreneurship model
o Fluid, less bounded outcomes and processes.
o Less predefined and more distributed entrepreneurial agency.




Less bounded outcomes:

, - The scope, features and value of product/service offerings continue to evolve even after the
idea has been executed.
 By modifying digital components, Tesla can introduce new functionalities and value
offerings into its cars, even after they have been delivered to customers.
- Most digital product designs remain somewhat incomplete and in a state of flux 
continuous evolution of a value proposition rather than executing a predefined opportunity
(as described in a business plan).
Less bounded processes:

- Time (e.g., digital infrastructures like 3D printing speed up implementation and
experimentation).
- Better scalability  the ability to rapidly enhance capabilities and performance at low cost,
due to digital infrastructures such as cloud computing and mobile networking.
 Examples: Airbnb, Amazon (from books to everything).
Less predefined and more distributed entrepreneurial agency

- Almost anyone can spot opportunities and act on them.
- Entrepreneurship can also involve many people from different organizations that work
together temporarily  new types of digital infrastructures, such as digital makerspaces,
have led to more collective ways of pursuing entrepreneurship.
Keep in mind: the use of digital technologies (e.g. e-commerce of own physical product) doesn’t
automatically mean that a company exercises digital entrepreneurship.

The traditional and digital model involve different actors:

 Traditional model  focuses on a predefined founder (or set of founders) who drives the
entrepreneurial idea (individual-opportunity nexus).
 Digital model  a dynamic and often unexpected collection of actors with diverse goals and
motives engage in the entrepreneurial initiative.
 Example I: digital platforms (e.g., SugarCRM, Open SYNC, etc.) allow shared value
creation by groups of actors (including individuals and ventures).
 Example II: digital infrastructures (e.g., crowdsourcing and crowdfunding systems)
allow collectives (groups) to pursue entrepreneurial initiatives.
Digital entrepreneurship = digital technologies play a central role in the venture. Digital
entrepreneurship is more than just a digital transformation of the business.

 Examples: cloud computing, social media, 3D printing, and data analytics.
Digital technology affects entrepreneurship via three essential elements:

 Digital artefacts
 Digital platforms
 Digital infrastructure




Digital artefacts

Digital artefact = a digital component, application, or media content that is part of a new product (or
service) and offers a specific functionality or value to the end-user. Digital artefacts are very general
and represent a decoupling of information from its physical form or device; they stand separate from
the product and can be used for many purposes (businesses/products).