Adoption of digital technologies, business model innovation, and entrepreneurial firm performance: Evidence from ASEAN startups

It is generally assumed that the adoption of digital technologies enables entrepreneurs to experiment more effectively. It is also assumed is that validated ideas are operationalized through their incorporation in the firm’s business model, or its operational architecture for the discovery, creation, delivery, and capture of customer value. However, both related assumptions have seldom been subjected to a direct empirical test. We surveyed 685 ’digital entrepreneurs’ in six Southeast Asian countries to test these assumptions in a cross-national and emerging market context. We measured the adoption of digital technologies in business models and business model experimentation and explored implications of these for business performance. Our analysis reveals that it is mainly the digital technology application in the business model by entrepreneurial businesses is a potent enabler of business model experimentation, which is a potent driver of business performance.