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Entrepreneurship, defined as the process of innovation that brings new products and services to the market (Bandera, Bartolacci, & Passerini, 2016), has drawn increasing attention in the Knowledge Management (KM) literature. Most KM literature on entrepreneurship has focused on entrepreneurial activities in the late stages of the KM process. However, a study in the field of KM and entrepreneurship shows that knowledge socialization is the most mature knowledge stage (Bandera, Bartolacci, & Passerini, 2016). We are interested in the early stages of the KM process, and we investigated how the innovation enablers affect the field of entrepreneurship. Waves of technological changes bring fascinating opportunities for innovators and entrepreneurs (Steininger, 2019; Secundo et al., 2020). Advances in information technology also serve as a significant enabler for innovation and economic growth (Boeker et al., 2019). Entrepreneurs are one of the change agents, and they play a vital role in economic growth based on information technologies and information communication technologies (ICT) since it may generate new opportunities for development (Elia, Margherita, & Passiante, 2020; Steininger, 2019; Olsson & Bernhard, 2020).
The reasons for adopting IT are to generate growth, stay competitive, and enhance innovation abilities (Nguyen, 2009). The business model is one of the main tools for absorbing technological perspectives of innovations. Particularly, entrepreneurs design and implement new business models through the enabling of information technology capabilities (Rai & Tang, 2014). In fact, businesses that are based on IT use different business models. This should be considered, otherwise the business may miss profitable opportunities (Hafezieh et al., 2011). IT is also a form of digital technologies used by organizations which play an essential role in providing means to enhance information and knowledge capture and sharing, lower the cost of production and labor, and add value to products and services and thus enhance the quality (Nguyen, 2009; Olsson and Bernhard, 2020). In the era of the knowledge economy, IT and ICT could be used as a source of knowledge by firms to enhance their performance (Javed et al., 2020). The literature also highlighted that digital technologies (e.g., such as big data, business intelligence, cloud computing, mobile services, and internet of things) facilitate entrepreneurial activities and significantly contribute to the digital economy due to the ability of technologies to support create activities (Abubakre et al., 2020). By adopting IT and digital technologies, the firm also initiates new ways of doing business such as digital business models and digital entrepreneurship (Elia et al., 2020).
The crucial difference between digital and traditional entrepreneurship is in the way the entrepreneur makes and markets a product (a good or a service) (Hafezieh et al., 2011). Specifically, digital entrepreneurship relies on digital media tools and IT in the pursuit of entrepreneurial prospects (Giones, 2017). The degree of digitalization is reflected in the digital nature of the product, digital marketing, digital distribution, digital interactions, and in the internal activities of a firm (Hull et al., 2007). Moreover, in this context, IT was also proven to influence the organizational design in terms of job design through supporting the autonomy within the organization and thus influencing employees’ attitudes toward involvement in entrepreneurial activities; lateral linkage design concerns with enhancing analytical and design capabilities; and decision-making design by taking the advantage of both centralization and decentralization design (Muñoz et al., 2016).