How digital user innovators become entrepreneurs: a sociomaterial analysis

ABSTRACT

Digital entrepreneurship has received growing interest from academics and practitioners. Another form of entrepreneurship in which interest has been greatly boosted, thanks to digital technologies, is user entrepreneurship. Drawing on the sociomaterial perspective of digital entrepreneurship, the present article contributes to this body of knowledge by exploring how user entrepreneurs frame and implement the process to create new firms to commercialise their own digital innovations. Our qualitative study reports a single case study about the process of digital entrepreneurship implemented by a patient innovator that launched a new firm to commercialise his healthcare innovative solution. Various theoretical propositions about the sociomateriality of the entrepreneurial process of digital user innovators are offered.

KEYWORDS:

• User entrepreneurship
• digital business
• digital entrepreneurship
• patient innovation
• healthcare

Acknowledgements

The authors want to thank the CEO of Sesame Enable, which provided full support to the study, and the reviewers of TASM for their valuable comments and feedback to a former version of the present article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Francesco Schiavone is Associate Professor in management at University Parthenope, Naples, Italy. He received the Ph.D. degree in network economics and knowledge management from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy) in 2006. He is also an Affiliated Professor in innovation management at Paris School of Business and Visiting Professor at IESEG Business School (France). In April 2017, Prof. Schiavone has been habilitated as Full Professor in management by MIUR (Italian Ministry of Education and Research). Currently, his main research areas are technology management, strategic innovation, communities of practice, and healthcare management and innovation.

Ilaria Tutore is an Associate Professor in Business Management at ‘Parthenope’ University – Naples. She earned her PhD in Management from ‘Parthenope’ University, during these times she has been Visiting PhD student at Aarhus School of Business, studying at ‘CORE’ research centre the environmental strategy of Danish power companies. Her research interests cover the field of Organisations and the natural environment, diffusion of innovation, green innovation and cross-cultural management.

Nicola Cucari gained his PhD in Business Management at Sapienza University of Rome. He obtained the national scientific habilitation as Associate Professor. Currently, he is Assistant Professor at Sapienza University of Rome and Adjunct Professor at different Italian Universities. He has been Research Fellow at University of Salerno and Visiting Researcher at University of Huelva (Spain) – Department of Management and at University of Hohenheim (Germany) – Institute of Marketing & Management. His research is related to innovation management, corporate governance and family business.

ORCID

Francesco Schiavone http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9219-6714

Ilaria Tutore http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3520-1449

Nicola Cucari http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8177-7764

Notes

1 We thank one of the reviewers for the relevant comment about the complementarity of digital skills of the entrepreneurial team.

Additional information

Funding

The present research received financial support by the University of Naples Parthenope.