Page - 12 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

2.3.3 Digital EntrepreneurialMindset for Platform-Centric Business Activities More and more companies that were originally product-focused are becoming platform-centric. Pursuing platform-centric activities achieves better results in both long-term revenue and growth, due to the greater prioritisation of digital opportu- nities through the reliance on aDEM. This is evident in businesses such asUber, which is now one of the most valuable and influential businesses in the world (Rahman andThelen 2019).Whereas big companies previously focused solely on products, today’s world is increasingly being dominated by platforms such as Amazon, Google and Facebook (Cusumano et al. 2019). Such platforms have established newways to create and capture value. Uber is connecting parties that either demand or supply a service, while Amazon connects sellers and customers. Thanks to their data and algorithms, today’s platforms exercise profound control (Rahman andThelen 2019). Therefore, entrepreneurs need to consider developing and adopting a DEM that recognises these profound changes in our society. The keydigital platform trends that anentrepreneurwith aDEMneed to spot are agility and flexibility offered by microservice architectures (software as a service), the containerised environment (platform-centric programs and applications), serverless computing (using thirdparties tomanagedatabases, servers andother corebusiness activities) anddigital ecosystems encapsulating digital trends (digital partnerships). According to Srinivasan and Venkatraman (2018), digital platforms and their constant development give companiesmore operational agility and provide entre- preneurswith avision for long-termgrowthandvalue creation.Thedeparture from short-term value creation to long-term value creation has started with big compa- nies, likeFacebook, focusingoncustomer retentionandacquisitionover short-term profits. Entrepreneurs with DEMs need to transform most of their business pro- cesses into digital platforms, data and new technologies, leading to new digital businessmodels, new digital business strategies and the digitalisation of customer interactions, business operations andworkforce processes (Raia 2017). When pairedwith digital platforms, all five types of digital trends listed previ- ouslywill improveover time.Thefirst stageof this process is for businesses to link their services todominant platforms,which allows themaccess to abroadermarket immediately. Such an advantage is not available to a regular entrepreneur.Another advantage is that these platform dominant companies can invest in these entre- preneurs’ businesses to help them through the start-up period. The second stage is aboutmakingchoices andmaintainingearly success.Businessesmust rapidly scale up their operations in order to maintain growth. Keeping up with technological changes andbeingable to realignknowledgewith this technological trajectory is of utmost importance for such businesses. Following the study of entrepreneurship in digital platforms, it is essential to focus on the strategic aspect. Entrepreneurs have to develop and adapt their strategies and business models when providing their products and services across digital platforms. One of the best examples of a platform-centric business is Uber. Uber has adopted newways of structuring afirm and expanding industry boundaries. It has shifted business away from selling products towards the facilitation of economic 12 M. Soltanifar and E. Smailhodžić