Digital Entrepreneurship Education in Emerging Countries: Opportunities and Challenges

Introduction

The growth of digital economy has an important role in strengthening the economy of a country. The advancement of information technology brings significant changes to the development of business ecosystems in the world. “The digital economy has encouraged businesses to develop their activities beyond their internal markets” (Kempster and Cope, 2010; Ziyae et al, 2014). Indonesia is one of the developing countries that consistently build digital ecosystems to support the development of digital entrepreneurship.

The development of the digital entrepreneurship is inseparable from the development of Internet technology. Internet users in Indonesia continue to increase. Based on a published data by Indonesia Internet Service Provider Association (APJII) in 2017, there are 143.26 million people in Indonesia who use the internet from a total population of 262 million people. The majority of internet users in Indonesia are between 19-34 years old with the number reached a total of 70.94 million people. Meanwhile, internet penetration in 2017 has reached 54.68%, where the number has increased compared to 2016, which is only 47.5%. The data shows that the business opportunity in the digital field is still very open, so it can be utilized by entrepreneurs to open and develop their business.

In the era of global economic competition, digital information technology based industry has changed the model, strategy, and value creation of new business. Higher education plays an important role in encouraging the growth and innovation of digital economy entrepreneurs in the development of human resources. However, higher education also faces challenges in realizing digital-based entrepreneurship education. Curriculum with more closer to the content of information technology and innovation is needed to equip students in implementing entrepreneurial education based on digital. Students need to be taught comprehensive logic (computational thinking), including how to model, analyze data, and extract information. In addition, related to complex systems and sharpen the sense of business with the direct practice of entrepreneurship.

The Government of Indonesia believes that the potential of digital business is very high; the built ecosystem can encourage Micro Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to transform into digital MSMEs. The digital entrepreneurship has facilitated traditional business interactions and has also offered new ways of doing (Schwens and Kabst, 2009; Ziyae et al, 2014). According to Minister of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Anak Agung Gede Ngurah Puspayoga, the number of Indonesian entrepreneurs only reached 3.1 percent of the total population. This ratio is still lower than other countries such as Malaysia 5 percent, China 10 percent, Singapore 7 percent, Japan 11 percent and US 12 percent (Kumparan, 2017).

Therefore, universities in Indonesia are aware of the importance of creating graduates or student entrepreneurs who are able to compete with other countries. One of the roles that are being executed is to respond to future challenges by creating new entrepreneurs based on digital or digital entrepreneurs. The creation of digital entrepreneurs is expected to increase the number of entrepreneurs in Indonesia, so it is expected to contribute economically and potentially in improving the quality of life of the community through job creation. This chapter tries to discuss the various opportunities and challenges faced by emerging countries, such as Indonesia in developing digital-based entrepreneurship education. Future research directions are also provided in this chapter.