Today, far-reaching technological developments are making a deep impact on societies and economic environments worldwide. New digital platforms infrastructure (fintech, data analytics, mobility, mobile business apps, nanotech, robotics, new space economy, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, cryptocurrencies, the internet of things, cloud computing and blockchain) are drawing us inexorably into a new globalized digital economy based on knowledge and mobility. In this context of fast-paced change, new creative industries, still in a state of flux, have arisen, while others have disappeared, at least in their traditional form. Moreover, the intermixing of these new technologies has led to a redrawing of boundaries and an increase in their porosity thanks to the links that have developed between the new and the traditional industries. This extends the limits of entrepreneurship out towards new industries but also towards industries with high barriers to entry due to regulatory, technological or structural factors such as space, finance, aeronautics, IT hardware and health industries.
For a growing number of people, these new technologies, considered as "external enablers", lead to a democratization of entrepreneurship and a lowering of the barriers to starting up a company by reducing (or eliminating) the difficulties inherent in the entrepreneurial phenomenon in its "classical" configuration, such as high resource intensity, uncertainty, limited time or information asymmetry. This new context, by offering new spaces for the creation, identification and exploitation of business opportunities, clearly extends the range of possibilities for a discipline such as entrepreneurship. In addition, digitalization has helped to break down the boundaries between the different phases of the entrepreneurial process. Few studies in the discipline, however, have examined the impact of these technological disruptions not only using the existing paradigms, but also by re-examining our very conception of the entrepreneurial phenomenon in terms of its evolving nature and shifting contours.
The aim of this handbook is that can be used both by academics aiming to familiarize themselves with the state of research and theory within topics and subtopics in digital entrepreneurship, as well as practicing entrepreneurs and managers aiming to familiarize themselves with leading edge practices and insights in digital entrepreneurship.