Page - 4 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

1 Introduction Tobesuccessful in themodernera, businessesneed toconsideronline reservations, online reviews, online discount coupons, automationof order processing andmany other technology-relatedaspects.Goingdigital is important for success,notonly for the restaurant tradebut formanyother industries. For instance, transport companies have to gain and retain passengers by positioning their services high in search results and by providing a smooth booking process. The emergence of digital technologies has transformed how businesses and entrepreneurship work (Nam- bisan et al. 2019).Distant communication, content overload andbig data are just a few of themany consequences of digitalisation with which entrepreneurs need to cope today. Today, entrepreneurs need to be aware that they can be disrupted not only by competitors but quite possibly by consumer interactionwith other similar digital products and services. Such constantly evolving integration has led to the creation of new digital and responsive business models. The manner in which businesses operate has been disrupted. Reacting promptly to the demands of con- tinuous product innovation, providing added-value services, improving the cus- tomer service experience and moving towards successful omnichannel marketing have become the new standards for doing business in the digital age. Businesses must navigate five significant trends that are shaping the digital future: mobile computing, cloud computing, social media, the Internet of Things (IIoT) andBigData (Valacich andSchneider 2018). These trends are transforming individuals, organisations and society for several reasons.There has alreadybeen a significant shift towards the use of mobile technologies for all transactions, from searching forproduct informationandcomparingalternativesall theway through to completing thepurchase.Thenumberofmobiledeviceusersworldwide isexpected to reach 7.26 billion by 2023 (O’Dea 2019). Social media use has developed beyondenabling family and friends to connect byallowingbusinesses tooperateor advertiseproducts through their ownsocialmediapages.Theproliferationof social media platforms has enabled entrepreneurs to better connect with their customers and to engage them in the development of newproducts andproduct launches. For example, Aral andDellarocas (2013) andRoberts et al. (2017) have indicated this fact. The IoT is often used to sell products, automate workflows and engagewith consumers (ValacichandSchneider2018).Cloudcomputingandapplications, such as data storage, servers, databases, networks and software, are widely utilised by modernentrepreneurs andoften lead tocost savings, increasedproductivity, greater efficiency,higherfinancial performanceandbetter security. It is notable that insight from big data analytics tends to influence companies’ strategic decisions to intro- duce new products and services (Arnason 2017). Overall, data-driven, cloud-enabled, platform-centric business activities deliver crucial insights for improving financial performance (Caldwell 2018). However, this pervasive digitalisation is not only opening newwindows of opportunities; it alsobringsnewchallenges.These range fromchangingmethodsof communication to shifting business models to an entirely digital environment. Adopting a digital 4 M. Soltanifar and E. Smailhodžić