Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Business Digitalization: A Study of Polish Enterprises’ Perspective

Abstract

The subject at hand is important for economic expansion and pertinent to the business's ongoing activities. The subject of business entrepreneurship in relation to technology advancement and the ecosystem approach has not gotten much attention in the literature and merits more research. The goal of the research problem and theoretical work is to determine which components of the entrepreneurial ecosystem help Polish businesses digitize their operations. Furthermore, a two-pronged perspective on digitization processes was presented, namely, from the inside (what businesses do to implement digitization) and from the outside (how the entrepreneurial ecosystem affects businesses' digitization processes). Following a statistical analysis of the data on the entrepreneurial environment and its dimensions, inferences were made based on the data's average values and modes. In order to achieve this goal, empirical data collected from a nationwide survey of firms (n = 302) were used. The study's conclusions also cover other important barriers to digital operations in businesses, such as user endowments, the Internet and social media, education and credentials, and the job market. The results of the study clearly demonstrate that state policy is crucial in supporting digitization processes; other ecosystem elements were also considered important, albeit their importance varies depending on the size of the company and the economic sector in which it operates, laws governing business adaptation plans and digitalization processes, regardless of their size.