Understanding Business Process Evolution in Digital Ventures

Wuttke,Tobias; Haskamp, Thomas; Perscheid, Michael; Uebernickel, Falk

Abstract

Business processes are at each company’s core and must be adaptedpermanently to react to changing markets, substantial growth, or legal regulations.Especially digital ventures have the potential to evolve fast, and consequently, theirbusiness processes need to change at the same speed. Two streams of literaturehave looked into this. Traditional business process management sees businessprocesses, once implemented, as relatively stable. In contrast, digital entrepreneur-ship literature highlights the inherent flexibility of digital ventures. Based on amultiple case study of five digital ventures, we analyze how entrepreneurs dealwith this tension when business processes evolve. Building on entrepreneurialbricolage, we propose two types of resource recombination that we find, namely,usage of existing private resources and re-configuring of resources already beingused within the venture. These insights contribute to extending our understandingof the evolution of business processes.

Keywords
digital ventures; digital entrepreneurship; business process management; business process evolution