Specific innovativeness, digital entrepreneurship, and female entrepreneurs

Abstract

ABSTRACT How does digital entrepreneurship help innovative, women entrepreneurs in emerging economies? Using strategic choice theory, we predict that specific innovativeness improves new venture performance, and that digital entrepreneurship enables innovativeness and increases its effect on performance. We also predict that innovative female entrepreneurs benefit more than male ones from a high degree of digital entrepreneurship. We confirm our hypotheses using primary data of entrepreneurs from Ghana (N = 199) and Vietnam (N = 223). We also conducted a series of robustness tests to validate our findings. We conclude that strategic choices among new ventures yield best results if bounded by prior strategic choice and specific innovativeness, enabled by a high degree of digital entrepreneurship, and enacted by women.