Overcoming challenges faced by digital entrepreneurs: a design thinking approach

Abstract

Purpose

The swift emergence of digital entrepreneurs since the pandemic began motivated us to study how these individuals have overcome challenges in such a dynamic, highly competitive landscape. Emergent themes were mapped using a design thinking approach for understanding these entrepreneurs’ actions during the early days of their start-up organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

We selected a purposive sample of 24 digital business founders whose ventures were less than two years old from various domains. Manual thematic analysis was conducted to arrive at the themes, and the design thinking approach helped us to conceptualize the integrative model.

Findings

We arrived at six themes for understanding how digital entrepreneurs overcame the challenges they faced. We traced four of these themes to the existing literature, and two were newly emergent themes.

Practical implications

Given the findings of this study, practitioners may benefit from leveraging a design thinking approach before initiating their entrepreneurial journeys. This study may additionally propel the interest of founders seeking to grow their businesses into larger organizations across geographical regions.

Originality/value

This in-depth qualitative study is among the earliest to explore ways to overcome the challenges digital entrepreneurs face during the early stages of their ventures. The theoretical contributions of this paper are in the application of design thinking and the creation of a conceptual model in the field of digital entrepreneurship.

Citation

Lamba, P.S. and Jain, N. (2022), "Overcoming challenges faced by digital entrepreneurs: a design thinking approach", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 36 No. 6, pp. 12-14. https://doi.org/10.1108/DLO-11-2021-0195