Blockchain as an external enabler of new venture ideas: Digital entrepreneurs and the disintermediation of the global music industry

Dominic Chalmers, Russell Matthews and Amy Hyslop

Journal of Business Research, 2021, vol. 125, issue C, 577-591

Abstract: Our study explores the work undertaken by entrepreneurial ventures when engaging with external enabling technologies. Specifically, we examine a unique sample of early-stage ventures who are using blockchain technologies in an attempt to disintermediate the music recording industry. We carry out a preliminary analysis of 36 venture ‘white papers’, before constructing and inductively analyzing 11 new venture case studies. In doing so, we identify three interlinked enablers of new venture ideas in this context: blockchain, ideology, and market volatility. Furthermore, we identify a range of venture-level shaping practices and field-level work that describes the framing and legitimizing activities undertaken by entrepreneurs to unlock the potential of external enablers. This extends recent conceptual work on external enablers of entrepreneurship. In particular, we propose a novel category of actor-dependent enabler should be advanced to capture engagement with the uniquely editable, interactive, distributed properties of digital technologies.

Keywords: Digital entrepreneurship; Blockchain; Digital platforms; External enabler; Ideology; Music industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296319305223
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:125:y:2021:i:c:p:577-591

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.09.002

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().