Digital innovation sourcing through entrepreneurial storytelling: Insights from Pebble time's crowdfunding success

Digital innovation is an open collaborative process that involves many contributors for creating digital products and services. Entrepreneurs continuously engage with various external actors during their venture's lifecycle, utilizing these interactions to source opportunities, knowledge and resources, while shaping the project vision. However, the mechanisms governing digital innovation sourcing remain unclear. This paper proposes an entrepreneurial storytelling perspective to bridge this gap. We study the case of digital innovation sourcing by analyzing the crowdfunding story of Pebble Time, the most successful Kickstarter campaign to date. Using digital archival sources, we trace Pebble's approach over the course of the campaign. Our findings contribute to the digital innovation literature by demonstrating how the company's efforts allowed diverse actors to participate collectively and affect the entrepreneurial story over time. We identify four modes of actions that digital ventures employ in the collective construction of entrepreneurial narratives: nudging, pushing, scanning, and highlighting. We suggest that the modes of digital action enable digital innovation sourcing when crafting a compelling narrative in the digital age. • Shift from firm-controlled to collective entreprenerial storytelling in digital entrepreneurship. • Narratives emerge from diverse entreprenerial actors interacting with digital ventures. • Storytelling shapes crowdfunded innovation beyond initial fundraising success. • Entrepreneurs adopt multiple narrative roles to engage partners and customers. • Storytelling relies on digital actions: nudge, push, pull, and highlight.