Strategizing for digital innovations: Value propositions for transcending market boundaries

Abstract

Digital entrepreneurs often exploit market opportunities across boundaries by constantly designing value propositions rather than innovating. We conceptualize this as a strategizing practice, which we aim to investigate further. This paper explores the mechanisms that digital entrepreneurs use to design and redesign value propositions to exploit market opportunities across boundaries by drawing on a two-year in-depth case study of a digital venture. We argue that at the heart of designing value propositions are the following four mechanisms: excogitating functionality, self-reverberating benefits, designating interdependencies, and conforming intentionalities. The paper argues that through the constant enactment of these mechanisms and a pattern that acts as a catalyst, it is possible to redesign the value proposition to transcend market boundaries without constantly developing new digital products. Our paper offers significant implications for digital technology entrepreneurship and strategizing literature by (a) capturing and theorizing the continual design of the value proposition as a strategizing practice to transcend market boundaries, (b) enunciating the mechanisms underpinning the design of the value proposition, and (c) introducing a new theoretical approach to the study of value proposition drawing on a practice perspective.