Living the Reality of Digital Start-Ups’ Social and System Entrepreneurship

Digital Entrepreneurship (DE) offers start-ups a range of affordances including the potential of rapid innovation based on better operational efficiency and agility. Its strategic, informational, transactional, generative, and/or transformational benefits may significantly up the odds for a start-up’s success. But digital dividends are not spreading as easy as digital technologies; DE only offers best returns to new ventures when their mindsets are sufficiently equipped to anticipate the tasks and challenges facing them. Based on conceptual analysis and design science research, this chapter looks at the entrepreneurial ‘altitudes’ of complexity and its systemic implications for priming start-ups. The perspectives are presented by two collaborating entrepreneurs living the DE-reality; their aim is to rationalize the objectives of their joint venture which couples a novel start-up business support application with a community platform for knowledge co-creation. The focus is on the transdisciplinary, explorational, and exploitational attributes underpinning systemic capacities and their potential for personalizing the venture’s community development agenda. This step is a pre-requisite for providing affordable tools to strengthen individuals’ resourcefulness for serving their diverse ambitions, means, and contexts. Insights into such real-case scenarios and contemplations are rare in academic literature; the chapter may forewarn or inspire entrepreneurs or researchers engaging in these spaces and opportunities.