Recognition and prioritizing entrepreneurial opportunities in the field of media startups

In parallel with emergence of digital media in the media industry and facilitation of content production and distribution, a great number of startups have been created in the media industry. Considering the two-way communication between entrepreneurship and media industry is identification of the existing entrepreneurial opportunities in the media industry deemed the most essential needs or components in this area. Currently, a limited number of research programs have been conducted on the linkage between media entrepreneurship and identification of relevant opportunities in Iran. The present research is regard practical in terms of the purpose and exploratory mix in respect of data collection and analysis. The objective of this investigation is to identify entrepreneurial opportunities in the media startups in Iran. Thus in this research, some deep semi structured interviews were arranged for 12 media experts and entrepreneurs with the aim of identifying the existing entrepreneurial opportunities in the field of media startups. In the qualitative section, the targeted sampling method for achieving the theoretical saturation and in the quantitative section, the systematic sampling method were used. The data were collected by means of the two methods of deep interview (in the qualitative section) and questionnaire (in the quantitative section). In the qualitative section, the existing opportunities in the media industry were identified by using the thematic analysis techniques. Additionally a pairwise comparison questionnaire was designed and distributed among the experts and entrepreneurs to establish the relationship between identified trends and opportunities intensity of their counter impact. the data gathered from the questionnaires were analyzed by the DEMATEL technique and finally 67 opportunities in 9 different segments of the media industry were identified. These opportunities, inter alia included news coverage, amusement, information service, advertisement, training/education and cultural areas.