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In this conceptual paper, we propose crowdsourcing for opportunity creation as a new field of further research in both in the information systems and entrepreneurship domain. Building on previous research on entrepreneurial opportunity creation, we elaborate on the benefits of employing a crowdsourcing approach to reduce uncertainty and iteratively develop an opportunity into a new venture. Based on this assessment we develop a research agenda that highlights the need to adapt previous crowdsourcing mechanisms for the special context of entrepreneurial opportunity creation. In doings so, we expand research of crowdsourcing to the field of entrepreneurship by extending the principles of crowdsourcing for innovation for entrepreneurial opportunity creation. Further, by highlighting the requirements of crowdsourcing for opportunity creation, we point towards potential future research issues. Such research should examine novel participation architectures that enable the iterative cocreation of an opportunity through different maturity stages, thereby overcoming the limitations of previous crowdsourcing efforts that rather focus on the generation of novel ideas than its evolution. Finally, we propose crowdsourcing as a practical way for entrepreneurs to validate their assumptions about their opportunity, thereby achieving fast and early product-market fit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latest studies found that an insufficient customer focus when developing business ideas represents a crucial factor in the failing of start-ups. That is why different concepts to early involve customers are being discussed in the literature more often recently. These concepts aim at including customers in the development and testing of new business ideas from the beginning. With the terms customer development and lean start-up, the literature currently describes different activities that exhibit certain interdependencies. Therefore, this paper aims at analysing these activities and depicting them in a holistic customer development process for the first time, hence allowing for a topical overview of the these concepts. Moreover, this paper shows which IT solutions for the IT support of particular process steps are provided in practice. Based on the insights gathered from this research, this paper also demonstrates important areas for future research in the field of "IT support for customer development." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business incubators are an important mechanism to accelerate the success of new ventures. The emergence of ubiquitous IT allows to provide several support services for start-ups via online platforms. One particularly promising approach is the concept of crowd-based incubation. To shed light on this novel topic we conducted a single case study at the crowd-based incubator JumpStartFund. The results provide several interesting insights and a preliminary conceptual model of crowd-based incubation that contributes on research of business incubators in general and provides valuable hints for practical applications that might extend the service offering of existing business incubators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New digital technologies inherently changed entrepreneurial processes and outcomes by leading to generative outcomes and distributed entrepreneurial agency. One theoretical perspective on entrepreneurship that aims at explaining both is the creation view of opportunities. This perspective suggests iterative social interaction between entrepreneurs and interested stakeholders and the evolutionary nature of opportunities as idiosyncratic for emergent entrepreneurial opportunities. One possible way to support such opportunity (co-)creation processes can be found in the literature on crowdsourcing. While the discussion on the phenomena of crowdsourcing is scarce in entrepreneurship research, it provides enormous potential for the field. Within this paper, we argue that entrepreneurs can leverage heterogenous social resources beyond their individual social networks to objectify opportunities by starting a sense making process, persuading interested stakeholders, and mobilizing external resources. We thus contribute to the discourse in entrepreneurship about how opportunities emerge from interactions between entrepreneurs and their social environment by highlighting the role of leveraging external heterogenous social resources in objectifying and enacting an opportunity. Furthermore, we contribute to the emerging literature stream of digital entrepreneurship by showing how the affordances of digital infrastructures make boundaries and agency of entrepreneurial processes less bound and provide an agenda that may guide future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]