Digital Entrepreneurship

In the past few decades, technological development has led to the digitization and digitalization of (mostly developed) economies into what one could now call digital economies. In a digital economy, digital entrepreneurs pursue opportunities to produce and trade in digital artifacts on so-called digital artifact stores or platforms and/or to create these digital artifact “stores” or platforms themselves. In this chapter, we extensively discuss the effects of a number of typical features of digital economies, such as the presence of (indirect) network effects and digital technologies reducing a number of important economic costs, on the extent and nature of entrepreneurial activity in such economies. Digital platforms have become one of the most discussed forms of digital entrepreneurship. We elaborate on how to create and grow a successful digital platform firm, but also how to successfully compete on such digital platforms. The latter is not so easy, given a number of challenges that digital entrepreneurs typically face when being active on such platforms. Finally, we describe the main features of a digital entrepreneurial ecosystem, in which digital entrepreneurs typically operate, and explain how they can be supported and regulated by policymakers, if necessary at all.