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Bridging Enterprise IT Operations and Digital Entrepreneurship: A Systematic Review of Skill Transfer Mechanisms and Pathways

Kelechi Chantel Egwuatu Anyanwu

Abstract

Cloud platforms, low code tooling, and data driven services have lowered the cost of launching software enabled ventures, and the professionals who operate enterprise information technology (IT) systems increasingly move into founding digital firms. Yet research treats their skills, the mechanisms by which those skills transfer, and the pathways they follow as separate conversations. This paper reports a systematic review that consolidates these strands. Following an established management review protocol and the PRISMA 2020 reporting standard, peer reviewed and selected sources were screened against transparent eligibility criteria and synthesized thematically. The review organizes transferable operational competencies into technical, managerial, and relational clusters and maps them onto the opportunity, product, market, and orchestration demands of digital venturing. It identifies six transfer mechanisms, namely experiential learning, analogical reasoning, network mobilization, codification and tooling, absorptive capacity, and identity reconstruction. It distinguishes four pathways, namely intrapreneurial spinout, independent founding, platform complementor entry, and advisory or fractional roles, and four moderators, namely the tacit content of a skill, contextual distance, ecosystem support, and the founder identity transition. An integrative framework links these elements and yields six testable propositions. The review locates the principal points of failure in the market skill gap and the operator to founder identity transition, and offers guidance for educators, enterprise talent managers, incubators, and policymakers.

Keywords

digital entrepreneurship; IT operations; skill transfer; human capital; absorptive capacity; entrepreneurial pathways; systematic review

References

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