Introduction to Cases on Digital Entrepreneurship: digital entrepreneurship as digital transformation

Digitalization is significantly affecting the way new ventures are created and managed. In addition to enabling new entrepreneurial opportunities via the creation of digital goods and services, digital technologies are profoundly changing the way entrepreneurs operate and create value for their customers. This introduction proposes a framework based on the idea that entrepreneurs should integrate their ventures’ core business value chain with an effective digital value chain design. We provide examples to show that entrepreneurs can fully reap the benefits of going digital by pursuing alignment between the two value chains. We then use this framework to identify opportunities and challenges of business digitalization and enablers and frictions for digital value creation. Finally, we adopt the framework to introduce the cases in this volume and highlight their specific focus in pitfalls and success stories.