Theoretical opportunities for rural innovation and entrepreneurship research

TL;DR

This paper explores how digital technologies like social media, cloud computing, and IoT create new opportunities and challenges for rural innovation and entrepreneurship, challenging traditional theories and suggesting new research directions.

Contribution

It reviews existing literature on rural innovation and entrepreneurship and identifies new research opportunities in the digital era.

Findings

Digital technologies enable new rural business models.

Traditional theories are challenged by digital transformation.

Opportunities for future research in rural digital entrepreneurship.

Abstract

Even though rural entrepreneurship and innovation has been studied for decades, the advent of social media, mobile, analytics, cloud computing and internet of things - also referred as digital technologies - (Nambisan 2013, Yoo et al. 2012) has provided new opportunities and challenges for this vast discipline. As a result, we see new business models, new processes, products and services offered using new digital technologies. Such changes challenge the orthodox view of IT entrepreneurship and innovation, opening new avenues for researches and challenges the existing theoretical understanding. This book chapter is an attempt to understand the existing literature on rural innovation and entrepreneurship in information systems discipline and identify opportunities for rural entrepreneurship and innovation in the digital era.