Digital Entrepreneurship: What is New if Anything?

Opportunity identification and exploitation are at the center of entrepreneurial activities (Shane and Venkataraman 2000; Short et al. 2010; Zahra and Dess 2001). Such opportunities can emerge through new digital technologies (i.e., the combination of information, computing, communication, and connectivity technologies, Bharadwaj et al. 2013) as well as through the change and disturbances that are brought about by these technologies in economy and society (Keen and Williams 2013). Our motivation in producing this Special Issue was to study whether established assumptions underpinning entrepreneurship theories still hold in the digital age, i.e., during the emergence and impacts of digital technology and related opportunities (Berger et al. 2021; Block et al. 2020; Steininger 2019; von Briel et al. 2021). Inspired by the focus of Business & Information Systems Engineering to examine problems related to the development, implementation and management of information systems, we propose to contextualize principles of digitalization to the entrepreneurship field. As guest editors (Dennis Steininger, Kathryn Brohman, and Joern Block) bring different perspectives, we aim to clarify the study of digital entrepreneurship by identifying what has changed and what remains the same. Before discussing underlying assumptions and summarizing the articles chosen for publication in this Special Issue, we would like to thank all authors that responded to our call for papers. Reviews were completed by scholars that conduct research at the intersection between information systems and entrepreneurship. We identified crossdisciplinary review panels for each paper to ensure our evaluation went beyond one of the involved communities. After a first review, we invited the authors of five papers to revise and resubmit their manuscripts. Guest editors worked closely with the authors to offer suggestions and provide constructive feedback. In the end, all articles that were included in the Special Issue span a wide range of the digital entrepreneurship phenomenon including changes to agency relationships, evolving digital capabilities, public policy, and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI).