Call for Papers, Issue 1/2022

The Effects of Digital Technology on Opportunity Recognition

Recognizing opportunities enabled by digital technology (DT) has become a competitive necessity in today’s digital world. However, opportunity recognition is a major challenge given the influence of DT, which not only disperses agency across various actors, but also blurs boundaries between customers, companies, products, and industries. As a result, traditional entrepreneurship knowledge needs to be rethought and the effects of DT on opportunity recognition need to be better understood. Drawing from opportunity recognition theory – as one of the central theories in the entrepreneurship domain – this study builds on a structured literature review to identify and explain three direct as well as three transitive effects of DT on opportunity recognition. These effects have been validated with real-world cases as well as interviews with academics and practitioners. In sum, this study contributes to descriptive and explanatory knowledge on the evolution from traditional to digital entrepreneurship. As a theory for explaining, the findings extend opportunity recognition theory by illuminating how and why DT influences opportunity recognition. This supports research and practice in investigating and managing opportunities more effectively.

Eras of Digital Entrepreneurship

While recent research continues to emphasize the importance of digital entrepreneurship, the historical terminology of this field is often overlooked. Digital entrepreneurship tends to be considered a new phenomenon despite emerging in the early 1990s. Building on a scoping literature review, this study analyzes 1354 publications that use nine different terms interchangeably to describe the phenomenon of digital entrepreneurship. Based on the number of publications per year, three eras in the historical development of digital entrepreneurship research are outlined. Digital technologies are identified as external enablers, and certain practical events are considered to be influencing factors. The results show that recent research has not adequately recognized the contributions of previous publications and that the understanding of digital entrepreneurship is quite similar with regard to the terms used and over time. This study shows how emerging digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, and big data analytics, might shape the future of digital entrepreneurship research. The study occupies the intersection between entrepreneurship and information systems literature and its main contribution is to provide new insights into the eras of digital entrepreneurship from the past to the present and into the future.