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Extant studies on digital entrepreneurship have mainly focused on firm-level characteristics and overlooked the external environment, ie, the digital entrepreneurial ecosystem (DEE). This study intends to fill that gap by exploring how a DEE emerges. We adopt the metaorganization theory as our theoretical lens and conduct an in-depth case study at Zhongguancun, a budding DEE often referred to as China's Silicon Valley. Case analysis reveals that the emergence of a DEE is a process of forming a meta-organization, whereby labour is divided into 3 roles and effort is integrated via 2 processes. Our study contributes to the digital entrepreneurship literature by offering a community perspective. It also contributes to the literature on meta-organization, which has mainly focused on the globally distributed meta-organizations and overlooked the collocated metaorganizations such as a DEE. Regarding practical implications, policymakers and community leaders responsible for DEE development can use our findings to develop their local DEEs. KEYWORDScase study, digital entrepreneurial ecosystem, digital entrepreneurship, meta-organization "IT is the magic ingredient that inspires and most often enables contemporary entrepreneurial endeavours."-MIS Quarterly Editor note by Del Giudice and Straub (2011, p. vi).

Digital innovation is becoming increasingly important in today's economy. Many digital innovations are developed not within organizations, but in innovation-driven entrepreneurial ecosystems, where various entrepreneurship related stakeholders collaborate and cooperate. Despite its significance, studies on digital entrepreneurship ecosystems (DEEs) are limited and the concept is largely undertheorized. This study intends to fill that gap by studying how a DEE organizes. This organizing issue is challenging, because stakeholders of a DEE are self-organizing and are not governed by any formal authority. To answer that question, we adopt forms of organizing as a theoretical lens, which provides structure to examine organizing issues. Through an in-depth case study of Zhongguancun, the Silicon Valley of China, we unveil eight processes around the themes of division of labor and integration of efforts. We further show that the forms of organizing feature a balance of centralized design and de-centralized emergence. This balanced view extends the forms of organizing literature, which takes an either/or perspective. Ecosystem architects and policy makers who intend to build entrepreneurship ecosystems to promote local economies can derive practical implications from our findings.

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