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Entrepreneurship and the Socio-Technical Chasm in a Lean Economy

Published: 21 April 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Online technologies are increasingly hailed as enablers of entrepreneurship and income generation. Recent evidence suggests, however, that even the best such tools disproportionately favor those with pre-existing entrepreneurial advantages. Despite intentions, the technology on its own seems far from addressing socio-economic inequalities. Using participatory action research, we investigated why this might be, in an intimate, close-up context. Over a 1-year period, we--a collaborative team of university researchers and residents of Detroit's East Side--worked to establish a neighborhood tour whose initial goal was to raise supplementary income and fundraise for community block clubs. We found that in addition to technical requirements, such as communication tools, a range of non-technological efforts is needed to manage projects, build self-efficacy, and otherwise support community participants. Our findings widen Ackerman's "socio-technical gap" for some contexts and offer a counterpoint to overgeneralized claims about well-designed technologies being able to address certain classes of social challenges.

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    CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 2018
    8489 pages
    ISBN:9781450356206
    DOI:10.1145/3173574
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