From User Innovation to User Entrepreneurship; Through the Lens of Opportunity Identification and Effectuation Theories

This Ph.D. dissertation is mainly addressing how users exploit from their innovation and become an entrepreneur consequently. User innovation literature has largely ignored the monetary incentives for the innovators and believed that the intrinsic needs are the drivers of user innovation. While the research on user entrepreneurship tackled this issue, they failed to address the micro-processes of shifting toward entrepreneurship for the user innovators. For this purpose, we employed opportunity identification theories and investigated the decision-making processes of the user entrepreneurs. To explain the concept better, effectuation theoretical framework was used. The topic of this thesis is mostly exploratory in nature and requires a qualitative method to describe it. Therefore, a multiple case study method is applied to this research to shed light on this topic. Emerging results appeared in this research and other theories are used to discuss the findings. This thesis contributes mostly to the research in user innovation, user entrepreneurship, effectuation, and opportunity identification theories. Practical implications are explained thoroughly and further research possibilities are argued.