Entrepreneurship at the Interface: How Crowdsourcing Can Support Opportunity Creation
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2017
Author(s)
Dellermann, Dominik
;
Lipusch, Nikolaus
;
Ebel, Philipp
Research Team
CCC, Crowdsourcing, IWI6
Abstract
New digital technologies inherently changed entrepreneurial processes and outcomes by leading to generative outcomes and distributed entrepreneurial agency. One theoretical perspective on entrepreneurship that aims at explaining both is the creation view of opportunities. This perspective suggests iterative social interaction between entrepreneurs and interested stakeholders and the evolutionary nature of opportunities as idiosyncratic for emergent entrepreneurial opportunities. One possible way to support such opportunity (co-)creation processes can be found in the literature on crowdsourcing. While the discussion on the phenomena of crowdsourcing is scarce in entrepreneurship research, it provides enormous potential for the field. Within this paper, we argue that entrepreneurs can leverage heterogenous social resources beyond their individual social networks to objectify opportunities by starting a sense making process, persuading interested stakeholders, and mobilizing external resources. We thus contribute to the discourse in entrepreneurship about how opportunities emerge from interactions between entrepreneurs and their social environment by highlighting the role of leveraging external heterogenous social resources in objectifying and enacting an opportunity. Furthermore, we contribute to the emerging literature stream of digital entrepreneurship by showing how the affordances of digital infrastructures make the boundaries and agency of entrepreneurial processes less bound and provide an agenda that may guide future research.
Language
English
Keywords
Entrepreneurship
crowdsourcing
digital entrepreneurship
opportunity creation theory
HSG Classification
contribution to practical use / society
Event Title
Academy of Management Annual Meeting (AOM)
Event Location
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Event Date
04.08.2017-08.08.2017
Eprints ID
250871