The Accidental Entrepreneur: The Emergent and Collective Process of User Entrepreneurship

TLDR

Users often become accidental entrepreneurs by discovering, experimenting, and refining ideas within user communities before formal evaluation, leading to improved concepts prior to firm formation. The study develops a process model of user entrepreneurship and compares it to the classic entrepreneurial model to highlight its emergent and collective nature. The authors construct and contrast a process model that maps how users create, evaluate, share, and commercialize ideas, emphasizing the emergent and collective aspects. The study reports detailed prevalence data of user entrepreneurship in the juvenile products industry.

Abstract

We develop a process model of how users, an understudied source of entrepreneurship, create, evaluate, share, and commercialize their ideas. We compare and contrast our model to the classic model of the entrepreneurial process, highlighting the emergent and collective nature of the user’s entrepreneurial process. Users are often “accidental” entrepreneurs who happen upon an idea through their own use and then share it with others; more specifically, the development of an idea and subsequent experimentation, adaptation, and preliminary adoption often occur before that idea is formally evaluated as the basis of a commercial venture. Users also tend to engage in collective creative activity prior to firm formation — often within the social context provided by user communities — that results in the improvement of ideas. Finally, we provide detailed data on the prevalence of user entrepreneurship in the juvenile products industry.