E-commerce Entrepreneurship: Emerging Practices, Key Challenges and Future Directions

Introduction The rise of the World Wide Web and electronic commerce has created one of the most challenging environments for entrepreneurship in recent history. Market needs and the technology required to meet those needs can change even while the product or service is still being developed (Iansiti and MacCormak, 1997). This framework demands that founders of organizations strive for "relentless innovation," leading their firms through the continual infusion of new ideas, and emphasizing constant innovation, experimentation, and rapid change (Cohen and Jordan, 1999). The environment of e-commerce enables entrepreneurs to rapidly try new approaches, quickly share successes and failures, and monitor what is new and useful (Oliva, 1998). E-commerce permits managers to become quicker in how they gather, synthesize, utilize, and disseminate information. Those who are willing to experiment with new product and service offerings will be positioned to compete most effectively (Hodgetts, Luthans, and Slocum, 1999). The extent to which entrepreneurs capitalize on the conditions presented by e-commerce and engage in experimentation and innovation is of major interest in contemporary research. Because of the demand for innovative organizational behavior present in e-business, this is an important domain in which to study entrepreneurship. However, because it is so recent, very little is known about the role attributes or innovative activities of entrepreneurs in Internet organizations. What enables emerging organizations to achieve effective performance? What are the opportunities and constraints in operating within this environment? These and many others questions are arising as the field of Internet entrepreneurship grows and develops. The answers 3 will inform the development of the growing research base in this area and will facilitate the subsequent comparison of key variables and relationships found in firms engaging in e-commerce with those in traditional brick and mortar firms. This paper presents the emergent practices and processes of e-commerce entrepreneurship, explores the key challenges facing the new ventures, and offers a research agenda to guide future work in this area. The paper draws on recent research findings and focuses on founders and organizations whose activities encompass the Internet, conducting multiple transactions on the Web, rather than on organizations that use the Web only for customer advertising and information gathering purposes. It is the premise of this paper that the first major step in developing a model of e-commerce entrepreneurship is to examine the processes and behaviors found within the ventures. The examination is conducted along several dimensions and contributes …