Digital entrepreneurship in online communities A study of knowledge sharing

Abstract

In this paper we have studied the different dimensions of knowledge that are shared regarding digital entrepreneurship. This study builds on the knowledge in the field of digital entrepreneurship and presents a tentative taxonomy of its ever changing pool of knowledge. Ventures in the digital economy require increasing amounts of knowledge to be able to compete. To get access to knowledge they need to interact with communities that engage in knowledge sharing, these communities can exist online or offline. The dimensions/structures of knowledge that the ventures can gain access to in online communities lacks studies. We ask ourselves: What subjects of knowledge does digital entrepreneurs share in online communities? The research setting was an online community governed by a Swedish non-profit organization. The community encouraged entrepreneurial activities in Sweden by organizing online innovation contests. Conventional divisions of subjects of knowledge were found to be incapable of covering the knowledge shared to digital platform ventures. In this study we have seen indications of three dimensions of knowledge; Scalability, Morphability, and Complementarity, that could not be fully explained by conventional knowledge theories. These dimensions covered sociomaterial attributes of digital platforms and as such they differed from conventional knowledge theories in entrepreneurship.