Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to explore the process and competitive factors of entrepreneurship in digital space in Iran. Design/methodology/approach -In the last decades, the development and advancement of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the business innovations related to them have defined a new economy which is known as "digital economy". Establishing and running businesses in this digital space means carrying out a kind of electronic commerce by exploiting the internet and other electronic networks. The new digital economy provides exceptional opportunities for many entrepreneurs to create new ventures in different business areas according to electronic commerce models. Given that researchers in Iran have not studied digital entrepreneurship and there is a great interest in digital entrepreneurship, further research is needed on this subject. According to research in Canada by Carrier et al. on cyber entrepreneurship, the authors used the same method and studied five cases that work in digital entrepreneurship in Iran. In this paper, the authors first review the literature of digital entrepreneurship -digital entrepreneurship framework that include a typology of digital ventures and their characteristics, characteristics of digital entrepreneurs, and the distinctions between digital and traditional entrepreneurship. Then five digital entrepreneurs in Iran were surveyed to explore the process of their entrepreneurship and competitive elements applied by them. Findings -The most notable contribution of this research is the focus on the process of this type of entrepreneurship and the steps which were used by entrepreneurs. Unlike the traditional forms of entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurs in cyber space in Iran did not examine the feasibility of their projects; also, the identification of a business opportunity created business ideas. Another contribution is that the authors found ten factors as the internet-based entrepreneurs' competitive elements in Iran, and also found interesting results about characteristics of internet-based entrepreneurs. Originality/value -This paper provides an overview of internet-based entrepreneurship in Iran. According to collected information, the authors propose the process of internet-based entrepreneurship and its competitive elements, and establish a basis for future research.

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PurposeDigital technologies, digitalised consumers and the torrent of customer data have been transforming marketing practice. In discussing such trends, existing research has either focussed on the skills marketers need or broad-based approaches such as agile methods but has given less consideration to just how such skills or approaches might be developed and used in marketers' day-to-day activities and in the organisation of marketing in the firm. This is what the authors address in this paper.Design/methodology/approachThis paper adopts an in-depth case study approach to examine an exemplary digital enterprise in transformation of their digital marketing. The insights were gathered from 25 interviews, netnography and document analysis of the case organisation in addition to 10 interviews with independent experts.FindingsDrawing on practice-oriented approach, the authors show how organisations respond to the emerging trends of digital consumers and big data by taking a ‘hacking marketing’ approach and developing novel marketing expertise at disciplinary boundaries. The authors put forward three sets of practices that enable and shape the hacking marketing approach. These include spanning the expertise boundary, making value measurable and experimenting through which their adaptive, iterative and multidisciplinary work occurs. This explains how managing digital consumers and big data is not within the realm of information technology (IT) functions but marketing and how marketing professionals are changing their practice and moving their disciplinary boundaries.Practical implicationsThis study offers practical contributions for firms in terms of identifying new work practices and expertise that marketing specialists need in managing digital platforms, digitalised consumers and big data. This study’s results show that enterprises need to design and implement strong training programmes to prepare their marketing workforce in adopting experimentations of agile approach and data-driven decision making. In addition, Marketing education should be changed so that programmes consider a review of their courses and include the novel marketing models and approaches into their curriculum.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the nascent discussions by unpacking how enterprises can develop new marketing expertise and practices beyond skillsets and how such practices form new hacking marketing approach which addresses the problem of the inability of the conventional marketing approach to show its value within the firm.

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