Dra. Yañez-Valdes, Claudia

Entrepreneurship and technology have been strongly connected over the last decades. The growth of digital technology and external factors have brought entrepreneurs new opportunities and challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic has reevaluated the relationship between digitalization and innovative business models. Like any entrepreneurial process, entrepreneurs face a complex adaptation process that determines their success or failure. We reviewed 208 articles published in the past decade to identify trends related to the determinants and impacts of digital entrepreneurship pre- and post-COVID-19 pandemic. Our results show trends in the definitions used, the relationship between external and internal factors that enable the exploration of available digital technologies for emerging business models, and the value digital entrepreneurs create for social, economic, and technological developments. Our study proposes a multidimensional framework and discusses challenges and opportunities.

Purpose Innovative initiatives focusing on social and environmental impact often need help to secure traditional financial resources for their launch. Equity crowdfunding platforms (ECF) provide a potential funding source for these initiatives, particularly for technological inventors. This research paper aims to theorize how ECF campaigns attract investors to invest in technological initiatives with social and environmental value proposition impacts. Design/methodology/approach Using an inductive qualitative approach, the authors have gained insights, from 35 sustainable technological projects sponsored by a Chilean equity-crowdfunding platform, regarding the business model's transformation to achieve sustainable social and environmental impacts. Findings Findings show that disruptive technologies and sustainable aims are pivotal factors in successfully attracting investors to support sustainable technological initiatives through ECF platforms or campaigns. These factors led investors to actively engage with these projects and contribute to the value-creation process by transforming business models with social and environmental impacts and utilizing sustainable technology to enhance efficiency and optimize available resources. Research limitations/implications Due to the nature of this research, researchers must test the proposed conceptual framework using longitudinal quantitative data from multiple ECF platforms, technological solutions and investors worldwide in future research to enhance the comprehension of this phenomenon. Practical implications The findings highlight the significant contribution of ECF platforms and technological portfolios toward creating sustainable impacts. It is a good signal for investors interested in investing in technological initiatives and addressing social and environmental challenges. Social implications The contribution of disruptive technological projects from ECF platforms and ECF investors to tackle social and environmental challenges. Originality/value This research theorizes how ECF platforms tackle social challenges by encouraging investors to invest and participate with entrepreneurs in the co-creation process of sustainable technological solutions.

Digital technologies have a significant potential for collaboration, designing, and implementing better business initiatives. COVID-19 global lockdowns have increased the emergence of the Digital Social Entrepreneurship (DSE) phenomenon, which has been key in responding to social needs using digital technologies. The DSE scholarly discussion has been limited to a few studies. Therefore, little is known about theoretical foundations that explain the intersection between digital, social, and entrepreneurship. Based on an integrative literature review and a thematic case study, this study theorizes the micro-foundations of digital-social value-creation and explores the flourishment of the DSE phenomenon during/after the global lockdowns. Our findings contribute to the literature by extending the DSE definition and identifying the fostering (micro, meso, and macro) conditions involved in the digital-social value-creation process. Several implications emerged from the DSE learning, adaptation, and co-creation strategies/practices.

The financial market has been transformed by FinTech platforms, which offer innovative products and services. FinTech platforms use a combination of technologies to digitalize processes and introduce new business models with unique characteristics. The benefits of FinTech initiatives are not limited to boosting the economic development of emerging economies; they also have a transformative impact on society and stakeholders. The transformative impact enables the democratization of digital services, making them accessible to marginalized groups that the traditional financial banking system has excluded. Our study theorizes how FinTech organizational capabilities (digital technologies, digital infrastructures, and talented employees) and FinTech ecosystem conditions (competitors, regulations, digital gender gaps, and institutional gaps) impact inclusion, transparency, and market expansion inspired by transformative entrepreneurship. We tested it through a multilevel analysis using data from 333 worldwide large FinTech platforms combined with secondary data at the country level. Results provide insights into how digital infrastructure, a skilled workforce, and closing the gaps for disadvantaged groups are crucial determinant factors for increasing FinTech impacts in emerging economies. Several implications for entrepreneurs, society, and policymakers emerge as a call for fostering digital societies and FinTech industry in emerging economies.

This study explores the emergence of a new entrepreneurship phenomenon (digital social entrepreneurship) as a result of the collaboration among many agents (N-Helix), given the government’s limited capacity to respond to the stakeholders’ needs satisfaction related to an exogenous event (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic). Our theory development is based on three ongoing academic debates related to (a) the unrepresentativeness of the stakeholder theory in entrepreneurship research; (b) the emergence of digital social entrepreneurship (DSE) as a bridge between stakeholders’ needs, socio-economic actors, and digital-social initiatives; and (c) the role of N-Helix collaborations to facilitate the emergence of global knowledge-intensive initiatives and the rapid adoptions of open innovations. Our results support our assumptions about the positive mediation effect of DSE in the relationship between N-Helix collaborations and stakeholders’ satisfaction. Notably, results show how pandemic has intensified these relationships and how DSE in N-Helix collaborations can generate social impacts globally. Some implications for policy-makers have emerged from our results that should be considered during/post-COVID-19 pandemic.