End-User Entrepreneurship: An Emergent and Collective Process

We develop a model of how end-users, an understudied source of entrepreneurship, create, evaluate, share, and exploit their ideas. Our model explicitly examines the interactive processes that precede firm formation, and by doing so highlights the emergent nature of entrepreneurial activity. We emphasize the role of user innovation communities and collective creative activity in shaping ideas. Finally, we provide a conceptualization of entrepreneurship that expands our thinking beyond simply for-profit ventures.