Creating an entrepreneurial story in digital spaces: the journeys and experiences of social media entrepreneurs

Abstract

The emergence of digital technologies is transforming entrepreneurial processes and outcomes. This creates a plethora of research questions at the intersection of digital technologies and entrepreneurship. A key question is if existing entrepreneurial models are applicable to understanding digital entrepreneurship. In this study we provide novel insights by exploring the following research question: How are established models of the entrepreneurial journey and the entrepreneurial experience challenged by the proliferation of social media? We utilize the entrepreneurial journey model proposed by Morris and Kuratko (2020) and the ten characteristics of the entrepreneurial experience proposed by Morris et al., (2012) as reference tools to understand if traditional process-based approaches to entrepreneurship are still relevant within a social media digital context. We provide novel contributions to traditional descriptions of entrepreneurship by providing an augmented view through a digital lens. The findings illustrate that the proliferation of social media challenges our established theoretical understanding of both the entrepreneurial journey and the entrepreneurial experience. We also provide new insights into the lived experiences of social media entrepreneurs, who are a distinct type of entrepreneur, with very different entrepreneurial journeys and experiences compared to traditional entrepreneurs.