Eventful journey from idea to business : Opportunity development and exploitation process of a digital technology start-up

Abstract

Start-ups are in the focus and important to the society, unfortunately many new ventures fail. Digital economy has given new potential for firms to create new business models and value creation mechanisms. The opportunity creation, development and exploitation process of digital start-up ventures, is a complex and dynamic process that is seldom linear following different stages of venture creation process in a nice and predetermined manner. Instead the journey developing the opportunity from the core idea is often happening through trial and error, and with several developmental cycles that are triggered from critical events and can lead to the creation of a business venture or abortion. Considering the challenges start-up entrepreneurs face, it is vital to find ways for the entrepreneurs to be able to develop their ideas faster with better results and with less wasted effort. This paper suggests a theory based conceptual framework for future empirical research.