Page - 305 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

develop and adapt to niche opportunities. This is due to the domain expertise of its founders and significantly lower regulatory, organizational, and structural con- straints with the SDGs being nevertheless supported through socially/ environmentally responsible practices. At the same time, it seems unlikely that any single framework could adequately quantify and qualify the wide variety of factors that influence the entrepreneurial activities of SMEs. Following the argu- ment put forward by Kuratko et al. (2015), we agree that only a synthesis of multiple frameworks has any potential to adequately represent Digital Entrepreneurship, especially social digital entrepreneurship. All economic systems are complex networks that are interconnected and interdependent (Bair and Pal- pacuer 2015; Rasche et al. 2013), and the formation of networks among entre- preneurs, the start-ups they create, and the SMEs they becomehave been found to be crucial to success (Austin et al. 2006; Dacin et al. 2011). Based on these underlying considerations, we explored the possibilities to help potential digital entrepreneurs to successfully support the SDGs thus positively impacting the “Decade of Action” through the structured application of open innovation, social digital business approaches, and future and emerging technologies. To use these concepts effectively, we developed a special variant of Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas (BMC) (Osterwalder and Pigneur 2010). Our “Digital Entrepreneurship for theDecade of Action”—Canvas (short: “Decade ofAction”- Canvas) adds multiple layers to the well-known version by Osterwalder to let digital entrepreneurs better engagewith the SDGs. The canvas implements three major new aspects, which we derive from our theoretical triad of open innovation, future and emerging technologies and social (digital) business. These newaspectswill directly help future digital entrepreneurs to evaluate how their solutions benefit the SDGs. First, in this canvas, not only the “usual” value propositions are to be explored, but, referring to the definition of social business, also the proposedvalue to theSDGs.Thismeans that the potential project and its value proposition needs to relate to the SDGs and to explain how it supports achieving them. Second, we refer to the concept of open innovation and the importance of multiple and different types of relationships with a variety of network partners in order to drive the development and commercialization of innovations. We delimited key environmental actors and influencers from key partners. By answering the question “Who is mostly impacting your field of impact/SDGs in thenext tenyears?”potential entrepreneurs learn that it is often the network to regulatory authorities or other societal or economicmultipliers that can bring a competitive advantage.Working on your network and keeping key actors that affect your field of impact can pay off early on. Third, Beneficiaries are of utmost importance to consider: in contrast to customer segments, thinking about beneficiaries enables digital entrepreneurs to embrace the “triple bottom line”, where environmental, social, and governmental actors benefit. This sensitization is supported by referencing concepts like Ashoka’s Theory of Change, or the social business approach (Drayton 2003). Fourth, referring to future and emerging tech- nologies, “KeyActivities” and “KeyResources” force the digital entrepreneurs to 314 M. Shamsrizi et al.