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Chapter 2: Theoretical Concepts

Chapter 2.1: Digital Entrepreneurship

Introduction

In the era of the Internet and digital technologies that are reshaping traditional business strategies,
structures and processes, one of the fastest-growing sectors is digital business.

The digital business also requires a new figure: the digital entrepreneur, focused on the

development of entrepreneurship linked to digital. But what do we mean by digital

entrepreneurship?
This chapter will help you understand what digital entrepreneurship is, providing a clear and simple

definition and highlighting its main characteristics; who is a digital entrepreneur and why digital

entrepreneurship can help young people address youth unemployment.

Digital entrepreneurship: Definition and main characteristics

According to the European Commission, Digital Entrepreneurship “embraces all new ventures and the

transformation of existing businesses that drive economic and/or social value by creating and using

novel digital technologies. Digital enterprises are characterized by a high intensity of utilization of novel

digital technologies (particularly social, big data, mobile and cloud solutions) to improve business
operations, invent new business models, sharpen business intelligence, and engage with customers and

stakeholders” (European Commission, 2015, p. 2).

While entrepreneurship, in its most basic form, can be described as self-employment (Gohmann, 2012),

digital entrepreneurship involves the pursuit of business or economic opportunities which occur on a
digital platform and on the use of digital technologies (Giones, Brem, 2017; & Zhao, Collier, 2016). The

use of digital tools and platforms promotes the emergence of new types of work that can hardly be

classified into the traditional categories of employment, self-employment, growth-oriented

entrepreneurial enterprises, etc. From this perspective, digital entrepreneurship represents not just a
subcategory of entrepreneurship, but «the reconciliation of traditional entrepreneurship with the new

way of creating and doing business in the digital age» (Le Dinh et al., 2018, p. 1). Entrepreneurs involved

Project: GameON - 2021-1-ES02-KA220-YOU-000028541 4