Research · Project
Organizations Born on Platforms
Some freelancers stop being freelancers and start being firms. What kind of organization gets founded inside someone else's technology?
Digital entrepreneurship research seeks to understand how digital technologies shape, and are shaped by, entrepreneurial processes and contexts. This project looks at a specific and under-studied case: entrepreneurs who started agencies on the Upwork platform, turning individual freelance work into an organization that recruits, coordinates, and sells the work of others.
What we ask
The project examines two aspects of digital entrepreneurship: founder attributes and the organizational structures of online agencies. It reconceptualizes Covin and Slevin's entrepreneurial orientation construct and Smith, Schallenkamp, and Eichholz's entrepreneurial skills assessment for founders operating within a platform, where the market, the rules, and much of the infrastructure belong to someone else.
Where it is going
Data collection is under way, with 25–30 founder interviews planned. The study is designed as a pilot for a large-scale longitudinal study that will mirror the platform-worker panel, following agencies over time to understand the organizational life cycle of digital entrepreneurship.