The entrepreneurship literature has recognised the impact of entrepreneurial behaviour and the contribution towards co-creating value by entrepreneurs within business communities. As such, entrepreneurs' behaviour within an online business community platform has been centre to recent academic debate marking contemporary digital transformation in multiple business sectors. A wide spectrum of entrepreneurship behaviour patterns may be unravelled to leverage value for business and to be influenced by dynamic determinants of online business communities. Given the paucity of research on this topic, this chapter intends to shed light on the behaviour patterns of digital entrepreneurs and the potential to co-create value within online business communities.
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Entrepreneurship has been widely acknowledged as the most pertinent way to contend with major social, technological, environmental, and economic challenges (Akpan and Ibidunni, 2021). Whilst entrepreneurship refers to the recognition, assessment, and exploitation of novel ideas and opportunities (Ajdari et al., 2016), the transition towards encouraging entrepreneurship has impacted industry policies leading to promoting new business ventures and innovation within existing ones. Aided by an enhanced entrepreneurial culture (Baranauskas and Raišienė, 2022), it also became a determinant of improved economic indicators, employment opportunities and encouraging the participation of individuals in the entrepreneurial conduct (Zaheer et al., 2019; Steininger et al., 2022). Being entrepreneurial may not be necessarily related to new start-ups; instead, it has become a critical aspect of existing businesses as to leverage growth, competitive advantage, and sustainability (Manea et al., 2021; Kollmann et al., 2022).
The literature on entrepreneurship has identified multiple aspects of entrepreneurial behaviour such as risk-taking, innovativeness, and pro-activeness (Fernandes et al., 2022; Laitsou et al., 2020). The nature of these behaviour patterns, however, varies among individuals depending on their entrepreneurial intentions and available opportunities (Herman, 2022). We opt to in this chapter to focus on the aspect of digital entrepreneurs’ behaviour by discussing models of behaviour and the prospect of knowledge sharing within digital entrepreneurship networks. In this vein, the emergence of the digital business environment facilitates new collaborative opportunities and challenges for entrepreneurs (Gavrila & Ancillo, 2022). From one perspective, it allows collaboration to enable the acquisition of a wide range of resources; while from another, it requires the adoption of a digital strategy and a mindset change in traditional business by promoting digital entrepreneurship (Jha et al., 2022).
Digital technologies instigated a transition in the existing patterns of doing business and ultimately resulted in improved products, higher revenues, market diversification, and improved product/service delivery (Manjon, 2022). Therefore, these changes have transformed traditional business practices towards an enhanced model of digital entrepreneurship (Nambisan et al., 2019). Digital business platforms and communities provide unconventional opportunities for collaborative knowledge sharing and idea generation and as a means of co-creating value (Fernandes et al., 2022). Moreover, it has also developed forward the type of skills and capabilities required for being a successful entrepreneur (Lin and Maruping, 2022).