Though entrepreneurship has been studied for decades, in recent years, the study of "rural entrepreneurship" has emerged as an upcoming subtopic of the area. With the growth and continual ease of utilizing digital technologies to support entrepreneurial activities, these technologies now provide unique opportunities for advancing rural entrepreneurship. Though prior research focused on challenges for IT use in rural areas that specifically investigated investment and management issues, it is important to study all challenges and opportunities involved in this developing area of research. Rural Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Digital Era is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on the utilization of digital technologies in rural business ventures. Unlike other references, this book studies the conceptualization process of rural entrepreneurship and innovation with the intention of providing guidelines and support for entrepreneurs. While highlighting topics such as microfinancing, risk management, and rural development, this publication explores innovative practices as well as the methods of IT investment and management. This book is ideally designed for business professionals, entrepreneurs, business researchers, academics, and business students.

This book contains 15 thoroughly refereed research papers selected from 90 submissions for the 5th, 6th, and 7th International Workshop on Enterprise Systems, Pre-ICIS 2010-2012, held in St. Louis, MO, USA, in December 2010, in Shanghai, China, in December 2011, and in Orlando, FL, USA, in December 2012, respectively. In addition, two invited papers complete this volume. The contributions in this edited book are multidisciplinary in scope and cover strategic, organizational, and technological dimensions. They range from purely conceptual to literature reviews to papers on teaching-related aspects. Taken together, these papers provide a holistic view of the enterprise systems research domain, including key characteristics, implementation issues, general aspects of enterprise systems use, specific solutions such as CRM and SCM, and future research directions.

Though entrepreneurship has been studied for decades, in recent years, the study of "rural entrepreneurship" has emerged as an upcoming subtopic of the area. With the growth and continual ease of utilizing digital technologies to support entrepreneurial activities, these technologies now provide unique opportunities for advancing rural entrepreneurship. Though prior research focused on challenges for IT use in rural areas that specifically investigated investment and management issues, it is important to study all challenges and opportunities involved in this developing area of research. Rural Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Digital Era is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on the utilization of digital technologies in rural business ventures. Unlike other references, this book studies the conceptualization process of rural entrepreneurship and innovation with the intention of providing guidelines and support for entrepreneurs. While highlighting topics such as microfinancing, risk management, and rural development, this publication explores innovative practices as well as the methods of IT investment and management. This book is ideally designed for business professionals, entrepreneurs, business researchers, academics, and business students.