Electronic entrepreneurship process in Iran; Problems and Barriers

Despite the economic crisis due to the globalization of markets and competitive pressures, online businesses are increasingly growing globally and Internet technology has made its creation and set up easier and quicker. However, it seems that the expansion of this kind of business is very slow in Iran; because an entrepreneur in Iran does not know what actions he must take – from the idea to the launch – to start an E-business and he would encounter serious obstacles and problems in this process. This qualitative study aims to identify obstacles and limitations of setting up E-business in Iran based on the Cyber Entrepreneurship Model. 12 electronic entrepreneurs have been selected through snowball sampling. The data accumulated by deep interviews have been analyzed by the method of content analysis, themes techniques and by Atlas TI software. After data analyzing the five major steps of electronic entrepreneurship – Identifying opportunities, discovering ideas, feasibility study, market analysis, and setting up – 19 issues and 49 items (obstacles and problems) have been identified. The results of the study show that evaluation and innovation should be considered in all the process of electronic entrepreneurship. Therefore, the suggested framework in this study could be used as a basis for all the beneficiaries, specifically the government and business environments in order to take over the problems and obstacles on the way of electronic entrepreneurship in Iran.