Modeling and configuration the factors affecting the development of digital entrepreneurship in small and medium knowledge-based companies

Digital entrepreneurship is new way of doing business that paves the way for the economic development of developing countries.The prevalence of COVID-19 has accelerated the need to develop this type of entrepreneurship.The purpose of this research is to model and configuration the factors affecting the development of digital entrepreneurship in small and medium knowledge-based companies, through the leveling and determining the extent of their interactions. The research ‎method of this study is applicational in objective and from the point of view of data collection is mixed-exploratory. This research has two qualitative sections to identify and level the factors affecting the development of digital entrepreneurship and a quantitative section to measure the interactions of them.The qualitative section semi-structured interview with 17 experts has been used to identify the factors influencing the development of digital entrepreneurship and in the ‎next step, Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM)‎ was used to determine the levels ‎of factors. In the quantitative part, the DEMATEL method has been used. For this purpose, DEMATEL questionnaire was provided to 12 experts and the effect of factors was calculated by using DEMATEL.The results of the ‎research show that 7 important factors affecting the development of digital entrepreneurship are classified in three levels of ground factors, construction and content factors. Structural factors with the most impressionability and the contextual factors with the most impact have an important role in the development of digital entrepreneurship in SME knowledge-based companies.