How drone entrepreneurs use dynamic capabilities to operate in an emerging market

Abstract

This thesis bridges the gap between the relatively advanced drone technology research and nascent business development nderstanding. The rapid technological development and growing number of use cases for drones make drone market an interesting area to study entrepreneurship and dynamic capabilities. Understanding the current reality of drone entrepreneurs and their surrounding business environment helps shape the emerging drone market in a more innovation-friendly direction. The study (1) sheds light on the current opportunities and challenges in the drone market from practitioners’ perspective and (2) analyses how entrepreneurial drone SMEs use dynamic capabilities to operate in the emerging market.

The study was conducted by applying the dynamic capabilities view, specifically the microfoundations of sensing, seizing, and transforming (Teece, 2007; 2014b), to data from 18 practitioner interviews. Reflexive thematic analysis was combined with both inductive and deductive analysis to extract meaningful themes to represent the observed microfoundations of dynamic capabilities. The study presents a model of how entrepreneurial SMEs use dynamic capabilities to transform sensed opportunities and challenges into continuous business model development to react to and shape the market forces.

The findings of the study show that SMEs use sensing, seizing, and transforming capabilities to shape and react to opportunities in their business environment. The study finds support for four microfoundations of sensing, eight microfoundations of seizing, and four microfoundations of transforming. Additionally, the study presents experimenting as a microfoundation of both sensing and seizing capabilities. It highlights its importance to resource-constrained SMEs as it allows efficient and agile use of firm resources by simultaneous and iterative sensing and seizing of opportunities.