When an adverse event happens to a neighborhood, it is the emergent entrepreneurs who help first
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Crowd-based technologies can help to involve stakeholders before, during, and in the aftermath of the event.
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Such technologies help to build community, mobilize resources, magnify entrepreneurial responses, and facilitate learning.
Abstract
The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has been a devastating crisis affecting the physical, social, and financial well-being of people the world over. Unlike business-as-usual, crises create unique context conditions in which to study digital innovation. Crises can create widespread suffering. Crises can also trigger the creation of “compassionate ventures” started by emergent entrepreneurs, who, by being themselves victims of adversity, are driven to start ventures to alleviate people's suffering. In this essay, we appropriate the literature from management and entrepreneurship on compassionate venturing to suggest a framework for helping to clarify distinctions in the ways in which digital innovation may emerge during crises.