Three Essays on Digital Transformation Challenges in Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Digital technologies’ emergence has changed firms’ innovation and entrepreneurship activities significantly. While the prior literature has investigated how digital technologies stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship, the challenges of the digital transformation process have received limited attention in the information systems (IS) literature. This dissertation aims to examine these challenges by studying policies and governance in the fields of intellectual property, data privacy, and digital infrastructure. In the first essay, I argue that the inefficient protection of employees’ intellectual property rights hampers their innovation activities at work. The second essay evaluates data privacy regulations’ impact on mobile app entrepreneurship. The third essay investigates how mobile platforms’ open policy impedes the adoption of innovative features in operating system (OS) updates. These three essays provide theoretical contributions to the literature on digital transformation, innovation, and entrepreneurship. They also offer practical insights for policymakers and digital infrastructure professionals about how to address digital transformation challenges in innovation and entrepreneurship.