Title: Digital Entrepreneurship: Opportunity Recognition and Exploitation
Author(s) : Nergis Aziz, Derya Dogan, Barry Friedman ,Zamira Ataniyazova, Zamira Ataniyazova, Dilmurod Khodiev
Digital entrepreneurship is gaining importance in the global economy and in academia. While social media offers entrepreneurs copious businesses development opportunities, little is known about the effect of social media on opportunity recognition. A conceptual model built on previous research (George et al. 2016) was proposed to test the relationship among hedonic value, alertness, social media use, entrepreneurial alertness, opportunity recognition, and opportunity exploitation. One hundred and fifty three (N = 153) digital entrepreneurs in Uzbekistan responded to a survey. Social media usage was found to mediate the relationship between entrepreneurial alertness and entrepreneurial opportunity recognition, and opportunity recognition was positively related to opportunity exploitation. The results contribute to the existing literature by providing new insights into the opportunity recognition and exploitation process by focusing on an underrepresented factor in the literature, social media use.