From a marketplace of electronics to a digital entrepreneurial ecosystem (DEE): The emergence of a meta‐organization in Zhongguancun, China
通过中关村案例，研究数字创业生态系统如何作为元组织出现，揭示劳动分工为三种角色并通过两个过程整合，为政策制定者和社区领导者发展本地数字创业生态系统提供参考。
Abstract Extant studies on digital entrepreneurship have mainly focused on firm‐level characteristics and overlooked the external environment, ie, the digital entrepreneurial ecosystem (DEE). This study intends to fill that gap by exploring how a DEE emerges. We adopt the meta‐organization theory as our theoretical lens and conduct an in‐depth case study at Zhongguancun, a budding DEE often referred to as China's Silicon Valley. Case analysis reveals that the emergence of a DEE is a process of forming a meta‐organization, whereby labour is divided into 3 roles and effort is integrated via 2 processes. Our study contributes to the digital entrepreneurship literature by offering a community perspective. It also contributes to the literature on meta‐organization, which has mainly focused on the globally distributed meta‐organizations and overlooked the collocated meta‐organizations such as a DEE. Regarding practical implications, policymakers and community leaders responsible for DEE development can use our findings to develop their local DEEs.