Call for Papers / Journal of Business Research / Digital or not – the future of entrepreneurship and innovation

[entrepreneurship-phd at lists.uni-due.de]

Journal of Business Research - Special Issue Call for Papers

Digital or not – the future of entrepreneurship and innovation

Guest Editors

Elisabeth S.C. Berger*, Frederik von Briel†, Per Davidsson† & Andreas 
Kuckertz*

*University of Hohenheim
†Queensland University of Technology

Theme of the Special Issue

Influenced by the evolution of digital technologies we currently witness 
a dramatic transformation of established industries and the global 
business landscape at large. Not only entrepreneurs and innovators are 
therefore excited about the opportunities and implications deriving from 
this transformation, but also researchers from many different 
disciplines have taken interest in this phenomenon. In particular the 
intersection of digital technologies and entrepreneurship/or innovation 
provides ample research opportunities as digitization dissolves 
boundaries and shifts agency of traditional entrepreneurship (Nambisan, 
in press) and innovation processes and outcomes (Nambisan, Lyytinen, 
Majchrzak, & Song, 2017). While digital technologies can be understood 
as external enablers stimulating and fostering the new venture creation 
process (von Briel, Davidsson, & Recker, in press), they can take 
different roles and manifest in various forms such as products 
(Lyytinen, Yoo, & Boland, 2015), product or service platforms (Tiwana, 
Konsynski, & Bush, 2010), infrastructure tools or systems (Aldrich, 
2014), or digital applications, components, or media content (Ekbia, 
2009). In other words, many research opportunities exist to shed light 
on the role and influence of digital technologies on entrepreneurship 
and innovation.

For example, the influence of digitization on society and whether it is 
positive or negative remains largely unclear. While digital 
entrepreneurship is assumed to offer leveling potential regardless of 
social background, physical characteristics or gender, it might also 
isolate groups or individuals that lack required resources or 
capabilities (Dy, Marlow, & Martin, 2017; Berger & Kuckertz 2016a). 
Digitization might also change the nature of entrepreneurial activity as 
it affects for instance the founder-customer relation, given that 
reduced visibility or even invisibility of both parties impacts 
trust-building factors and signals (Kuester, Konya-Baumbach & 
Schuhmacher, 2018). At the same time, new digital data sources emerge 
that provide increased visibility to entrepreneurship researchers 
(Obschonka & Fisch, in press). Similarly, while the “sharing economy” 
has led to the birth of various successful start-ups based on digital 
platforms such as AirBnB, Instacart, and Uber, its long-term impact on 
industry competition, market developments, and society at large are yet 
to be determined.

Against this background, this special issue seeks to build the empirical 
and conceptual basis for the academic discussion on the relevance, 
nature and implications of digital entrepreneurship and innovation. Due 
to the multi-disciplinary nature of digital innovation and 
entrepreneurship, the special issue aims to bring together scholars from 
different disciplines to provide a multi-faceted perspective on the 
phenomenon. Potential topic areas for this special issue circling around 
digital technologies, entrepreneurship, and innovation include but are 
not limited to:

- Data (e.g., big data, open data)
- Economics (e.g., security regulations, governance, formal 
institutions, policies, infrastructure)
- Finance (e.g., blockchain, fintech, social trading, crowdfunding)
- Management (e.g., organizational boundaries, resource orchestration, 
routine transformation, lean start-ups as a consequence)
- Marketing (e.g., social media, virtual communities)
- Psychology (e.g., perception of digitization, impact of digitization 
on user/customer behavior, visibility and invisibility)
- Regional development (e.g., entrepreneurial ecosystems, spillover effects)
- Sociology (e.g., justice, gender effects, gender equality, exclusion/ 
isolation of individuals)
- Strategy (e.g. strategies for digitization, evolutionary paths of 
digital ventures, technologies for co-creation, business model 
innovation, innovation collaborations for digital innovation)

Both empirical as well as conceptual papers are welcome. Due to the 
complex and interrelated nature of digital entrepreneurship and 
innovation, conventional research methods might be of limited use to 
capture the dynamics, interrelatedness and non-linearity (Berger & 
Kuckertz, 2016b) of this phenomenon; this call therefore explicitly 
invites the application of interesting and novel emerging research methods.

Submission Procedure

Submissions exclusively for the special issue should be submitted to the 
JBR online submission system by December 1st 2018. All submissions will 
be subject to the standard review process followed by JBR. All 
manuscripts must be original, unpublished works that are not 
concurrently under review for publication elsewhere. All submissions 
should conform to the JBR manuscript submission guidelines available at 
https://www.elsevier.com/journals/journal-of-business-research/0148-2963/guide-for-authors. 
The system will be open for submission between October 1st and December 
1st 2018. The publication of the special issue is expected by 2019.

Interested authors are additionally invited to submit promising papers 
to a paper development workshop to be held at the G-Forum in Stuttgart, 
Germany, early in October 2018. The G-Forum is the oldest and largest 
entrepreneurship and innovation conference in Germany, Austria and 
Switzerland, attracting on a regular basis approximately 400 submissions 
from more than 20 countries. Full papers submitted and invited to the 
G-Forum 2018 can also be considered for the special issue if indicated 
to the conference organizers when submitting on the conference website 
at https://www.fgf-ev.de/en/g-forum-2018-stuttgart-germany/. Promising 
papers will then be invited to be uploaded to the JBR submission system, 
where they will enter the standard review process.

References

Aldrich, H. (2014). The democratization of entrepreneurship? Hackers, 
makerspaces, and crowdfunding. Annual Meeting of the Academy of 
Management. Philadelphia.

Berger, E. S. C., & Kuckertz, A. (2016a). Female entrepreneurship in 
startup ecosystems worldwide. Journal of Business Research, 69(11), 
5163–5168.

Berger, E. S. C., & Kuckertz, A. (2016b). The Challenge of Dealing with 
Complexity in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology Research – An 
Introduction. In E. S. C. Berger & A. Kuckertz (Eds.), Complexity in 
entrepreneurship, innovation and technology research – Applications of 
emergent and neglected methods (pp. 1–9). Cham, Switzerland: Springer 
International Publishing.

Dy, A. M., Marlow, S., & Martin, L. (2017). A Web of opportunity or the 
same old story? Women digital entrepreneurs and intersectionality 
theory. Human Relations, 70(3), 286–311.

Ekbia, H. R. (2009). Digital artifacts as quasi-objects: Qualification, 
mediation, and materiality. Journal of the American Society for 
Information Science and Technology, 60(12), 2554–2566.

Kuester, S., Konya-Baumbach, E., & Schuhmacher, M. C. (2018). Get the 
show on the road: Go-to-market strategies for e-innovations of 
start-ups. Journal of Business Research, 83, 65–81.

Nambisan, S. (in press). Digital entrepreneurship: Toward a digital 
technology perspective of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship Theory and 
Practice.

Nambisan, S., Lyytinen, K., Majchrzak, A., & Song, M. (2017). Digital 
innovation management: Reinventing innovation management research in a 
digital world. MIS Quarterly, 41(1), 223–238.

Lyytinen, K., Yoo, Y., & Boland, R. J. (2016). Digital product 
innovation within four classes of innovation networks. Information 
Systems Journal, 26(1), 47–75.

Obschonka, M., & Fisch, C. (in press). Entrepreneurial personalities in 
political leadership. Small Business Economics.

Tiwana, A., Konsynski, B., & Bush, A. A. (2010). Platform evolution: 
Coevolution of platform architecture, governance, and environmental 
dynamics. Information Systems Research, 21(4), 675–687.

von Briel, F., Davidsson, P., & Recker, J. C. (in press). Digital 
technologies as external enablers of new venture creation in the IT 
hardware sector. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice.

More info at 
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-business-research/call-for-papers/digital-or-not-the-future-of-entrepreneurship-and-innovation