Adoption of digital technologies, business model innovation, and financial and sustainability performance in startup firms

Over recent decades, advances in digital technologies have precipitated a major structural transformation in the organization of society and the economy. Ubiquitous digital connectivity has enabled economic and societal processes to be increasingly reorganized to take advantage of digital technologies. This process has transformed also the context within which entrepreneurs discover and pursue entrepreneurial opportunities and compete against established firms (Nambisan 2017). Arguably, the most important characteristic of digital technologies is their ability to enable business model innovation – i.e., a radical rethink of how entrepreneurial businesses organize for the creation and delivery of customer value and capture this value as business profit (Bouwman, Nikou, and De Reuver 2019; Massa and Tucci 2013; and Rachinger, Rauter, Müller, Vorraber, and Schirgi 2019). This is a particularly important opportunity driver for entrepreneurs, as established businesses tend to focus on optimizing their existing business models, which may hamper their ability to take advantage of the latest digital opportunities (Autio, Nambisan, Thomas, and Wright 2018). Yet, surprisingly little is known about the performance effects of digital technology adoption by entrepreneurial businesses. In this report, we explore such performance effects by means of a six-country survey of digital entrepreneurial businesses. [...]