Digital Entrepreneurship: The Next Big Thing
The digital economy is developing rapidly. Cutting edge technologies such as the innovation of mobile and social solutions, data analytics, and cloud computing are quickly changing how businesses are run. These technologies hold great potential in the creation of jobs. How well and quickly economies adopt digital technology could be a determinant of future growth.
Sadly, according to the European Commission department of Enterprise and Industry, this huge potential is under-exploited in Europe as a whole with 41 percent of all enterprises being non-digital and only 2 percent taking full advantage of digital opportunities.
What is digital entrepreneurship?
Digital entrepreneurship refers to utilization of digital technology so solve business challenges. It is best defined as the transformation of business through utilization of digital solutions.
Digital enterprises are characterized by high utilization of novel digital solutions including big data, social data, cloud, and mobile solutions to improve business operations, sharpen business intelligence, invent new business models, and profitably engage with customers and stakeholders. Get more information about digital entrepreneurship at Joanna Shields news.
The next generation entrepreneurs – the digital entrepreneurs – have witnessed better returns on investment because of the ever increasing number of digital consumers and consistent growth in digital innovations.
What does it take to be a successful digital entrepreneur?
Cutting it in the digital age requires a thorough understanding of entrepreneurship and technology. Digital entrepreneurs view the world from large flat screen monitors. All their processes, from internal management to customer relations are handled from the monitors. Yet the passion remains the same; just like the traditional marketer would put an ad on TV hoping to grab the attention of a potential customer, the digital entrepreneur believes in maintaining customer relationships through digital platforms such as emails and cold calls.
There isn’t a concrete definition of a digital entrepreneur. However, they tend to fit the Type A personality; the self-driven, self-confident, hard-working, always busy, and rather impatient personality. In the tech-world, these Type As are found in busy environments writing tech articles, speaking at tech-conferences and continuously thinking about what’s happening next in the digital world.
You’ll make a great digital entrepreneur if you’ve always envisioned yourself as a manager of your own company – a company that you started from the ground up. And at the heart of the business must be digital technology. According to one research, for an enterprise to be considered truly digital, at least 45% of its investments should be directed towards IT.
New practices, same old rules
Even as ways of doing business change, the same old business rules must be observed. For instance, investing in accounting software shouldn’t stop you from keeping overhead in check. Also, you’ll need to ensure high productivity and minimal ownership of capital assets.
The European Commission has developed a framework for driving up digital entrepreneurship. This will be accomplished in 5 steps;
1. Enhancing digital innovation and commercializing the ICT sector
2. Strengthening the digital infrastructure to make it easier to do business
3. Facilitating access to finance
4. Providing education and training to foster e-leadership skills
5. Cultivating a supportive entrepreneurial culture.
Summary
It will be a long journey before the digital entrepreneurship dream becomes a reality but it’s encouraging to see that leaders and governments are already putting structures in place to support the transformation. The consistent growth in mobile technology should make transition even smoother.