History of Technopreneurship: E- Entrepreneurship to Technopreneurship

The history of technopreneurship is going back to 1970. The term technopreneurship is an emerging field of entrepreneurship today. But the term technopreneurship isn’t born at once. It has gradual developments from era to era.

In this article, we are going to talk about

1. Technopreneurship vs Digital entrepreneurship
2. Different Terms Used to Describe Technopreneur
3. Evolutions of Technopreneurship
   1. The Seed Era of Technopreneurship
   2. The Startup-Era of Technopreneurship
   3. The Growth Era of Technopreneurship

Technopreneurship vs Digital entrepreneurship

Technopreneurship is a business term that refers to entrepreneurs who specialize in the area of information technology. Digital entrepreneurship defines the combination between digital technologies and entrepreneurship. it is the creation and scaling of digital ventures, whose business model is based on generating value via electronic information through data networks.

Both Technopreneurship and Digital entrepreneurship are the same meaning, discussing the same area of entrepreneurship in technology or digital base. From time to time people use different terms to describe things. Previously people use the term “Digital entrepreneurship” to discuss the technology-based development of entrepreneurship now the most used term is “Technopreneurship”.

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Different Terms Used to Describe Technopreneur

• E- Entrepreneur / Electronic Entrepreneur
• Digital Entrepreneur
• Virtual Entrepreneur
• Online Entrepreneur
• Cyber Entrepreneur / Cyberpreneur
• Internet Entrepreneur / Net Entrepreneur
• IT Entrepreneur
• E – commerce Entrepreneur
• Technopreneur / Tech Entrepreneur

Evolutions of Technopreneurship

We can recognise three generations in the historical development of technopreneurship. Those are,

1. The Seed Era of Technopreneurship (1970–2000)
2. The Startup-Era of Technopreneurship (2001–2015)
3. The Growth Era of Technopreneurship (2016–20xx)

Every recognised generation is encouraged by innovations in digital technologies.

The Seed-Era of Technopreneurship (1970-2000)

The Seed Era denotes the birth of historical development in the field of technopreneurship and is mainly denoted by the establishment of Electronics technology and the Internet. Electronics entrepreneurs are the business individuals who operate electronics business units. These enterprising individuals have an intrinsic attraction to the way electronic gadgets work.  They are mindful of the latest movements in the electronics industry and desire to become entrepreneurs in this field.

Radios, televisions, stereos, computers, transistors, and integrated circuits are some of the popular electronic devices at the start of the electronic technology industry. Those innovations helped to develop electronic technology as an industry.

Then the next thing we can identify in this seed era is the development of the internet. The official birthday of the Internet is supposed as January 1, 1983.  After years of expansion, Internet technology was eventually accessible to the public populace in 1993. The basic benefits of internet technology, particularly in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, it stimulated a broad scope of entrepreneurial opportunities via doing business electronically.

By the late 1990s, the initial opportunities provided by the Internet had been examined, and the latest business opportunities had appeared. The combination of electronic development and the internet usage world has opened new opportunities like e-commerce.

Online shopping became potential when the internet was opened to the public in 1991. Amazon was one of the first e-commerce sites in the US to initiate selling products online and thousands of businesses have followed after. The comfort, safety, and satisfying user experience of e-commerce have enhanced exponentially since the advent of online shopping.

September 4, 1998, is another turning point in the Seed Era of technopreneurship. The google company is officially launched on that day. It has given a big boost after the year 2000 for the development of the internet of things and technopreneurship.

In the late 1990s Rather than relying on business models built on traditional value chains, companies like Amazon and Google understood at an early stage the potential of business models built on electronic value, leading to the so-called dot-com boom.

Finally, terms like the internet of things, internet entrepreneurship, online shopping, and e-commerce started in this era. After these things expanded and developed in the next eras.

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The Startup-Era of Technopreneurship (2001–2015)

The Start-up Era is one shift that saw the emergence of many new practices of utilising internet technology. Examples contain new digital technologies, such as open source, social media platforms, mobile, LTE, and cloud computing.

After a quick recovery period following the bursting of the dot-com bubble, users quickly took the new market developments. Renewed platforms offered them not only more forms to interact with one another through electronic data networks but also the option to take a more active part in the Internet and share almost all forms of data in this era.

in this era, these digital developments call as internet entrepreneurship, and e-entrepreneurship. The term technopreneurship is not broadly used to describe these digital developments. Because this era world lot more focused on the digitalization of business processes, business models and business environments. This also recalled a development in practice or the growth in the involvement of users with the Internet.

Compared to the Seed-Era, the Startup-Era discourse the role of new prospects. Such open-source software established on internet technology, specifically in the field of entrepreneurship, gradually increased. For example, in

• 2001- Wikipedia was introduced
• 2004 – Facebook was introduced
• 2005 – YouTube was introduced
• 2006 – Twitter and Spotify were introduced
• 2008 – Airbnb was introduced
• 2009 – Uber, WhatsApp, and Pinterest were introduced
• 2010 – Instagram was introduced

In the latter half of Seed-Era, we can identify the start of the term internet entrepreneurship. During the Startup-Era these developments of open-source software based on internet technology helped identify these developments as internet entrepreneurship.

The new breed of entrepreneurship – Click here

The Expansion-Era of Technopreneurship (2016–20xx)

The last era from 2016 to now is denoted by a turbulent turnaround and the appearance of many new digital technologies that are penetrating the global market. These technologies introduce digitalization into every element of individuals’ lives.

In this context, the processing of enormous quantities of data (i.e., big data), now underpins many new digital technologies. as is particularly evident in the dominion of the five GAFAM firms (Google (Alphabet), Apple, Facebook (Meta), Amazon, and Microsoft), which dominate the collection, processing, and transfer of enormous quantities of electronic data.

Terms like Internet entrepreneurship and digital entrepreneurship are used to describe this era’s developments in technopreneurship. This can be recognised as a result of the development of new digital technologies throughout this era. For example, AI (Artificial intelligence), is the simulation of human intelligence procedures by machines. Particularly computer systems. The latest growth of artificial intelligence has seen it spread across dozens of industries and sectors. From manufacturing and robotics to pharmaceuticals, supply chain management, and regular AI software automation, it’s happening everyplace.

Since 2020 the focus on digital technologies has increased throughout the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the resulting economic impact reached levels unseen since the great recession of the 1930s, the use of digital technologies and internet traffic raised by about 60 per cent.

However, the borders of entrepreneurship are increasingly expanded, as reflected in a trend for digital technologies encouraging what has been termed everyday everyone entrepreneurship., It allows each person to exploit opportunities and be an entrepreneur. That development of technoprenership directs to the evolution of the entrepreneurship phenomenon as a whole.

Conclusion

In this article, we first discuss the terms technopreneurship and digital entrepreneurship. Then we discuss different terms used to describe technopreneurs. Finally, we discuss three generations of technopreneurship. So, what are your thoughts about this article? Write down it in the comment section.

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