Digital entrepreneurship – A social interaction perspective

• Author: Eric Braune,Frédéric Teulon,Leo Paul Dana
• Date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/cjas.1544
• Published date: 01 September 2019

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Digital entrepreneurship –A social interaction perspective

Social interaction is important to consider when studying

entrepreneurship (Aldrich and Zimmer, 1986). Around

the world, social networks are important to various

degrees; Berger et al (2015, p. 462), observe that Arab

wasta is similar to Chinese guanxi. Social interaction is

perhaps even more important in the case of digital entre-

preneurship, because of the new and complex context

that it introduces. Addressing the then‐novel technology

of the Internet, Etemad et al. (2010, p. 336) wrote;

“relations on the internet are more explicit than those

based on interpersonal and culturally or socially based

relations. In fact, most of the online relations are of

functional and professional nature, explicitly articulated,

and do not lend themselves to interpersonal or cross‐cul-

tural misunderstandings or misinterpretations, whether

favorable or not. The nature of internet‐assisted relations

may, therefore, differ qualitatively from those based on

actual human relations outside the Internet.”

Digital entrepreneurship today goes further, as it offers

social interactions that change communications, uses,

and relationships among: (i) entrepreneurs; (ii) firms;

(iii) institutions; and (iv) users (Sussan and Acs, 2017;

Delanoë‐Gueguen, S., and Liñán, 2018; Song, 2019).

Examples of interactions among entrepreneurs, users,

institutions and agents through digital infrastructure

include:

i. User‐Entrepreneur interactions including crowd

funding for new start‐up financing, crowd-

sourcing, and the recognition of opportunities, as

well as innovation, and the development of new

products;

ii. Inter‐Entrepreneneur interactions and/or Entrepre-

neur‐Firm interactions, that can open access to

new markets, and a variety of innovations, including

the development of new products, co‐branding,

code‐sharing, and cross‐selling; and

iii. Inter‐Investor interactions among venture capitalists,

who share knowledge of innovations, start‐ups,

related risks and risk sharing.

It appears that social interactions, of the types men-

tioned above, contribute to comparative advantage,

growth and survival of entrepreneurial projects through:

(i) more efficient financing; (ii) access to markets

resulting in increased sales, possibly of a new product

and/or of an existing product in new markets; (iii)

improved organization, possibly the result of sharing

knowledge; and (iv) increased strategic flexibility.

Networks (and interactions within them) are thus

central to the understanding of digital entrepreneurship.

As indicated by the lead paper in this special issue,

entrepreneurs search for information and resources

through their networks and co‐operate with others;

findings reveal that network density, and time to first

collaboration have an impact on the probability of

survival and hence, based on one's social network, the

survival time of a start‐up can be forecasted.

The new and complex playing field offers much

opportunity for research and dialogue among

researchers and practitioners. Consequently, this special

issue is interested in social interactions that arise from

social networks and platforms, and how these affect

access to funding, new information, and exchange

knowledge, and thus build on innovations (and new

products).

Suggested Topics

•Ideas generation, problem solving, and innovation

diffusion in online entrepreneurial communities

•Digital tools to support fast prototyping and Lean

start‐up

•Entrepreneurship in Open source communities

•Entrepreneurial online ecosystems

•Collective intelligence and entrepreneurship

•Digital technologies to support Open innovation in

start‐ups and SMEs

•Use of Social media by entrepreneurs and SMEs for

knowledge sharing

•Entrepreneurship and the Sharing economy

•Knowledge sharing in venture capital networks

•Crowd‐funding and crowd‐sourcing for resource

pooling and opportunity recognition in new venture

creation

DOI: 10.1002/cjas.1544

452 © 2019 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Can J Adm Sci. 2019;36:452–453.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cjas