Unlocking the potential of digital entrepreneurship in turbulent times: A comprehensive overview

Digital technologies are central to how entrepreneurs respond to external shocks and uncertainty, yet research about digital entrepreneurship lacks a conceptual architecture for theorising this relationship. This paper develops a multilevel framework for understanding digital entrepreneurship under conditions of turbulence and makes three contributions. First, we sharpen the distinction between digital entrepreneurship (DE) and entrepreneurship in the digital age (EDA), arguing that the ontological properties of digital artefacts create distinct opportunity structures requiring dedicated theorising. Second, we conceptualise turbulence not as a uniform exogenous shock but as a relational condition whose entrepreneurial consequences vary by level of analysis and by the type of digital mechanism through which actors respond. Third, we foreground a core paradox—the simultaneous democratising and exclusionary potential of digital technologies—and propose it as an organising tension for future research. The six papers in this collection anchor the framework across micro, meso, and macro levels and motivate a research agenda organised around four foundational questions.