Open source technology is at the core of the digital disruption to offer companies a robust, secure but cost-effective IT infrastructure. Enterprises use various software solutions which integration and maintenance are a big huddle due to complex and time-consuming adaptions. Open source provides fast adaption and controlled upgrades. Traditionally, open source can be dated back to the 1950s when software development was a side product of hardware that gave big business back in these days. In the 1990s and the early 2000s, open source arose with developers working across enterprises to create open software being accessible to the public. Open source software can be viewed, contributed to, and redistributed. Examples of open source software are broad, whether it’s operating systems, databases, web servers, application servers, or browsers, the concept of open source is digital disruption. …

Entrepreneurship is received as a set of mindsets and habits an entrepreneur is developing and performing rather than single characteristics that uniquely identify someone as an entrepreneur. Still, some characteristics indicate the degree of entrepreneurial thinking which depends on your identity and development of self-awareness.

According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Link), self-esteem is the second-highest need for self-actualization. Respect, status, recognition, and strength are characteristics entrepreneurs are seeking and they identify themselves as being valued for these.

Private Identity vs. Public Identity vs. Entrepreneurial Identity

As mentioned above, personal development affects entrepreneurial thinking. From a psychological point of view, our identity is comprised of two identities — a personal one and a public one. While private identity is difficult for externals to observe, the entrepreneurial identity also makes up the public self. The private identity consists of characteristics like thoughts, feelings, and fantasies that people do not necessarily want to share with their community, partners, or customers. Knowing the thoughts and feelings of a person is difficult and therefore it is rather guessing a person’s inner thinking. The entrepreneurial identity is about what entrepreneurs are sharing publicly which is also part of their private identity. …

The digital transformation drives organizations into extending their business to greater ecosystems — but what is the reason for this evolvement? A business ecosystem is key to meet the fast-growing competition that the globalization and digitization yields and enables organizations to exist in an era of digital, fast-changing business models. Examples of successful business ecosystems can be found from time to time and are very diverse. Take for example the joint venture that Daimler and BMW started in 2019 to explore the mobility services and technology of the future. Both car manufacturers want to profit from the joint venture by combining their mobility services into joint services to evaluate the customer needs and to confront other car manufacturers. Many executives want to enter business ecosystems as all-in-one solutions fearing to miss out trends and changing customer needs. In contrast to this naive approach of entering business ecosystems, the focus of such alliances shall be concrete business problems — otherwise, the ecosystem will lack clarity, openness, and enablement. Let’s have a look into the different aspects of open business ecosystems and how these will interact with an enterprise’s business model. …

Artificial intelligence (AI) is widely used in today’s business such as for data analytics, natural language processing, or process automation. The inclusion of artificial intelligence bits and pieces into digital business models creates value by improving back-office efficiency and increasing customer experience. The emergence of artificial intelligence is based on decades of research for solving difficult computer science tasks and is now rapidly transforming business model innovation. Companies that are not considering artificial intelligence will be vulnerable to those companies that are equipped with artificial intelligence technology. While companies like Google, Amazon, and Tesla have already innovated their business models with artificial intelligence, medium and small caps have limited budgets for putting much effort into setting up such capabilities. One high-effort task in creating artificial intelligence services is the pre-processing of data and the training of machine learning models. To meet the speed of the market it most often is not enough to set up internal capabilities to perform the pre-processing. Google for example makes use of a very pragmatic solution — the task of data labeling and validation for their machine learning models are outsourced to all those who are Google users. Have you ever thought about the aim of Google Captcha? Sure, it is used to pretend bots from intruding applications but besides this, daily, millions of users are part of the Google analytics pre-processing team which are validating machine learning algorithms — for free. …

Often, I ask myself what it takes to be a world-class entrepreneur — clearly, I have not figured it out yet. I am researching on the topic of successful entrepreneurship a lot, reading lots of books, testing different business ideas, and exchanging my findings with others. In regard to books, I am done always reading about the same thing — the alleged successes of their business and why you can only be successful by following a strict set of giving steps. I myself am considering a set of personal characteristics to be much more important than a given order of steps that entrepreneurs must follow to be successful. If someday there will be a chance for me to become an influential entrepreneur, I can take this chance because I have a flexible set of characteristics and not a static plan which such books suggest. …

The amount and characteristics of the data that are being generated are exploding. Automatically collected data from sensors, machines, and devices map out how people interact and what their behaviors are. Governments, institutions, and companies are more and more making their data available for free. The key motivation for open data is to increase the transparency of decision-making but for sure to economic value. This might not be a direct revenue stream as an equivalent to the data but rather indirect revenue which correlates to the provided data. The recent digital transformation supports the generation of data but also empowers the data to be processed in real-time. Even smartphones, for example, have nowadays enough power to process diverse geolocation data and provide navigation services. …

Team management is more often than not something you can learn with the right tools. It’s the basis of most businesses and companies where you work with people to complete vital tasks. It is a uniquely rewarding and fulfilling career path and skill to have. You get the opportunity to inspire and influence teams to greater heights as an entrepreneur and team manager. Leadership is a vital part of team management, yet it always pays to remember that you should lead people and manage processes. As Peter Drucker (Link) so eloquently put it:

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. …

Nowadays, an increased number of companies rely on e-commerce strategies for selling and reaching out to their customers. The decision which many companies must confront is whether to host the online shop or to go for a retailer marketplace like Amazon. Both options yield advantages and disadvantages. While hosting includes big efforts in managing the supply chain activities like shipping, payment, and warehouse management, retail marketplaces may limit the customization of the online presence or put pressure on the sales margin. Well, there is also a third option — e-commerce platforms allow companies to manage their online shop and all its supply chain activities. …