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2025 AOM Annual Meeting

ENT

RM

10676: Digital Footprints of Entrepreneurs

Sunday, July 27, 2025
08:30 - 11:30 CEST (GMT+2)
Location: Bella Center: Hall B- B6-m1
Session Type: PDW (workshop)
Orientation: Research
Shareable link: https://cdmcd.co/jPdvya
When entrepreneurs and new ventures take action in digital spaces, fine-grained time-stamped recordings, namely digital footprints, result from these encounters (Golder & Macy, 2014). For example, web surfing logs, transaction records, images and videos, GPS locations, media playlists, voice and video call records, and social media texts or e-mails are specific digital footprint types (Kosinski, Wang, Lakkaraju, & Leskovec, 2016). The availability of vast samples of these footprints, paired with advanced computational power and sophisticated methods (T. Hannigan et al., 2019; Short, McKenny, & Reid, 2018), opens up exciting new possibilities to gain a deeper understanding of entrepreneurial activities (Fisch & Block, 2021; Obschonka, Lee, Rodríguez-Pose, Eichstaedt, & Ebert, 2020; Prüfer & Prüfer, 2020). However, entrepreneurship research seems unprepared and does not fully leverage the new advancements around digital footprints (Obschonka & Audretsch, 2020). Addressing the untapped potential and methodological challenges of leveraging digital footprints, this PDW aims to foster engagement, knowledge exchange, and some methodological training among entrepreneurship scholars. The PDW begins by engaging participants with an introduction to the concept of digital footprints and presenting an overview of processing methods such as text, image, and video analysis. This foundational understanding is enriched through focused presentations on sequence analysis, topic modeling, and leveraging ‘The Wayback Machine.’ Following this, a panel discussion brings together leading scholars to address critical questions, including ethical considerations, and methodological advancements in entrepreneurship research. The final segment involves paper round tables, allowing participants to share research projects and receive feedback from experts in the field.