DIT researchers win award for digital entrepreneurship

DIT PhD student Kisito Futonge Nzembezie and DIT Lecturer Dr Anthony Buckley won a ‘Best Paper’ award for their research on digital entrepreneurship at the Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE) conference in Birmingham, UK.

Response: DIT researchers

The award is a major validation of Kisi’s PhD project, which is challenging conventional wisdom in digital entrepreneurship research.

“My research explores the mechanisms driving the growth process of a pure digital entrepreneurial venture. There is very little theoretical writing in this area, so my research is breaking new ground. Equally novel is the approach used to gain insight on the phenomenon. The methodology I’m using is also innovative. As insider researcher, I am bootstrapping a new digital venture in Ed-Tech as the vehicle for real-time experimentation and learning. In the end, I hope to identify mechanisms driving growth as a process in pure digital entrepreneurship, as well as how enactive methodologies can be applied in investigating digital entrepreneurial phenomena.”

Background

ISBE is the premier UK association for entrepreneurship and SMEs, and the conference is the major annual UK conference in the entrepreneurship and SME domain.

Kisi completed his MSc (Business & Entrepreneurship) in the DIT School of Marketing in 2015, winning the Gold Medal on the programme. His PhD research is funded through a DIT Fiosraigh Scholarship. Dr Anthony Buckley and Professor Thomas Cooney are supervising the project.