The Challenges of Creating Meaningful Impact in Digital Entrepreneurship

Sammanfattning: Purpose: Recently, global impact investments broke the $1000-billion barrier and another $4200 billion are required to tackle the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Additionally, digital entrepreneurship has been hailed for its ability to usher in a sustainable future. Therefore, this research seeks to uncover common challenges among digital impact ventures regardless of industrial affiliations among impact ventures, which in turn could inform broadly applicable strategies on how to mitigate these challenges. Methods: This study was conducted through qualitative thematic analysis. A series of interviews with founding entrepreneurs and industry professionals from various impact ventures were conducted, subsequently transcribed, and analysed according to 1st and 2nd order analysis. Results: The results indicate emerging patterns of challenges between impact ventures, though these occur infrequently and lack sufficient corroborating evidence to be considered definitive proof of specific patterns occurring within impact ventures. Though several individual phenomena and emerging patterns are observed, which warrants its own research that could shed further light on challenges impact ventures face. Contribution: Prior empirical studies have not attempted to map the unique challenges digital entrepreneurs face in attempting to create meaningful impact. While it is concluded that to get more clarity on broadly manifesting challenges within digital impact ventures, further and more specific research is required. This study contributes by highlighting avenues of further studies pertaining to challenges of creating meaningful impact.