=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3316/poster-paper2
|storemode=property
|title=Startup Digi-Dojo: A Digital Space Supporting Practice and Research of Startup Remote Work
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3316/poster-paper2.pdf
|volume=Vol-3316
|authors=Xiaofeng Wang,Sylvia Hubner,Jorge Melegati,Dron Khanna,Usman Rafiq,Eduardo Guerra,Daniele Morselli
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/icsob/WangHMKRGM22
}}
==Startup Digi-Dojo: A Digital Space Supporting Practice and Research of Startup Remote Work==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3316/poster-paper2.pdf
Startup Digi-Dojo: A Digital Space Supporting
Practice and Research of Startup Remote Work
Xiaofeng Wang, Sylvia Hubner, Jorge Melegati, Dron Khanna, Usman Rafiq,
Eduardo Guerra and Daniele Morselli
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, 39100
Abstract
Many companies, including startup companies, are transitioning or pondering about the transition
to remote work. However, with the various benefits of remote work also come specific challenges.
These challenges tend to be exacerbated in the startup context. The existing body of knowledge on
remote work neglects the specifics of the startup context. Similarly, the research on startups does not
provide knowledge on their challenges in the remote work setting. Even though online support for
startups does exist, it is not clear how the support tools should be designed to purposefully address the
specifics of startup remote work. In this article, we introduce a research project that aims at obtaining a
comprehensive understanding of the challenges and characteristics of startup remote work, and building
a digital space, which we call Startup Digi-dojo, that can support startup remote work as well as research
on remote startups. Startup Digi-dojo will offer a unique opportunity to build a novel kind of collaboration
and synergy between startups and researchers. We will develop Startup Digi-dojo using the Design
Science Research approach. Since the project is in its inception phase, we present the research design and
initial architecture of the system in this article in order to get early feedback from the scientific audience.
Keywords
Remote work, Digital workspace, Startups, Research practice partnership, Virtual workspace
1. Introduction
Remote work (or telework, work from home, work from anywhere) is on the rise for quite some
years. Already in 2013, Fried and Hansson (2013) stated that “The (remote work as) future is
already here – it’s just not evenly distributed” [1]. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic,
remote work has become an evenly distributed reality, at least temporarily. The advancement
of technology enables an increasing number of people to fulfil their tasks not only from their
workplaces but from wherever they want.
Remote work is particularly attractive for startups. It increases the chances to recruit talent
from all over the world which is particularly difficult for startups as they do not yet have an
employer brand. Startups working remotely can benefit from virtual technologies, e.g., as
support for knowledge creation and leadership development [2]. Indeed, some startups have
even committed to working all-remote from the beginning, for example, the successful software
International Conference on Software Business, November 08–11, 2022, Bolzano, Italy
$ xiaofeng.wang@unibz.it (X. Wang)
0000-0001-8424-419X (X. Wang); 0000-0001-5879-1130 (S. Hubner); 0000-0003-1303-4173 (J. Melegati);
0000-0003-4760-5560 (D. Khanna); 000000033198851X (U. Rafiq); 0000-0001-5555-3487 (E. Guerra);
0000-0001-7994-9443 (D. Morselli)
© 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR
Workshop
Proceedings
http://ceur-ws.org
ISSN 1613-0073
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
companies GitLab (www.gitlab.com) and Basecamp (www.basecamp.com). Despite of the large
number of studies on remote work, the research is fragmented and focuses on established
companies [3]. Because startups are understudied in the remote work literature, we know little
about startup-specific remote work practices and tools. This is problematic because working
in startups differs from working in established firms [4]. Understanding the startup-specifics
is important because building startups, especially innovative high-tech startups, is a highly
challenging endeavour, and the failure rate is extremely high [5].
The research project presented in this paper aims to provide a better understanding of the
challenges and characteristics of startup remote work, and to support startups towards efficient
and sustainable remote work practices. To achieve the objectives, a design science research
approach will be employed and a digital platform will be developed as the main resulting artifact.
We call the platform “Startup Digi-dojo”. Dojo is a Japanese term that means literally place of
the way. The term is used in martial arts to refer to a place of formal training. Startup Digi-dojo
will be a digital place that provides remote work training to startup teams. This training will
be underpinned by a novel kind of collaboration and synergy between practice and research,
enabled by the online setting.
2. Background and Related Work
2.1. Remote Work Challenges for Startups
Remote work can have positive outcomes. For example, increased flexibility provides new
opportunities for skill development and for knowledge transfer [6]. However, despite the
evidence for positive outcomes of remote work, research has also shown that problems can arise
such as reduced collaboration and well-being [7]. Often there are frictions on several levels
including reduced social embeddedness and different legal regulations at different locations [6].
The challenges associated with remote work tend to be exacerbated in startups. When startups
work remotely, they need to find new ways to advance the quality of their teamwork because
low team member proximity can decrease communication and coordination quality, mutual
support, effort, and cohesion in innovation projects [8]. Due to the dynamic and challenging
environment in startups, team building activities are often neglected, particularly when working
remotely. Moreover, in remote settings, a climate of psychological safety and empowering is
even more important than in on-site settings [9], and the effects of leadership amplify [10],
suggesting challenges for leaders in startups who often do not yet have leadership experience.
2.2. Digital Solutions Supporting Startup Remote Work
Remote work is based on digital and virtual solutions. When working in a remote manner,
startups avail online support naturally and primarily. Due to the scarcity of the knowledge
on startup remote work in the literature, there also is a lack of understanding on what digital
solutions can better support the remote work of startups. Some online solutions do exist to
support startup development. For instance, Leanstack (leanstack.com) offers “workshops, tools,
and coaching” that are “delivered 100% virtually” and on which startups can “participate from
anywhere in the world.” Founderly (founderly.com) offers a virtual co-working space to allow
the creation of new connections among participants and offers educational resources, such as
workshops. Some accelerators offer their programs fully online, such as Newchip (newchip.com)
that “require[s] no relocation and [runs their] program entire online.” However, all these existing
online solutions do not support startups with purposeful consideration of the unique challenges
of remote work in the startup context.
2.3. Research Practice Partnership
Research-practice partnership (RPP) is a type of initiative commonly seen among educational
researchers where researchers partner with school districts, principals, and teachers to create
and implement interventions to improve educational outcomes. They establish a process
that is characterized by co-creation where researchers and practitioners continuously interact.
Through co-creation, scientific results are translated into practical interventions after researchers
conclude that an intervention or tool is useful based on their development and trials [11]. Penuel
et al. proposed a framework to conceptualize RPPs as joint work at boundaries based on cultural
historical theories of learning and development. According to the framework, researchers and
practitioners have cultural, professional and organizational differences, forming boundaries
between them [12]. In RPPs, the actors cross these boundaries, i.e., they try to be “understood
and navigated” to achieve successful collaboration. Thereby, they encounter crossings, i.e.,
moments in which the actors recognize these differences, and build boundary practices, i.e.,
“more stabilized routines, established and sustained over time, that bring together participants
from different domain for ongoing engagement”, which enable them to develop boundary
objects that “anchor joint work.” The remote online setting lowers the barriers of researchers
and startup teams to reach each other, and equips them with advanced digital tools to implement
boundary practices which bring them together to co-create practices and routines to facilitate
startup remote work and research on it.
3. Startup Digi-dojo: a digital workspace for remote startups
Startup Digi-dojo will consist of three different components, supporting remote work of startups
at different stages (early and mature), and supporting researchers to conduct startup related
studies, as shown in Figure 1.
The basic components, i.e., a remote-work component and a startup component (the grey
boxes in Figure 1), will provide the support to startup teams to work in a fully remote manner.
Special focus will be put on the creative, dynamic, and fast-paced processes of building a startup
(e.g., rapid prototyping, group brain storming, customer interviews, etc.). The Startup Research
component (the blue box in Figure 1) will allow researchers to conduct their studies with the
startup teams that use Startup Digi-dojo. This component will have unique features to establish
the research-practice-partnership that Startup Digi-dojo is aiming for. Startup teams work and
learn in their Digi-dojo Workspace or their own workspace with integrated elements from
Startup Digi-dojo, and their work is studied by researchers via the Startup Research component.
Combining the remote-work and startup components with the Startup Research component
allows startups and researchers to collaborate online. This way will enable a positive loop
between practice and research. Through this close collaboration, Startup Digi-dojo will allow us
Figure 1: The overall architecture of Startup Digi-dojo
to derive interesting insights towards a comprehensive understanding of startup remote work,
and yield scientifically sound solutions that are immediately implementable for startups, and
meanwhile, increase the validity and relevance of the research for startups.
4. Conclusion
Remote work is the “new normal” that all companies have to embrace in their way of working.
It presents specific opportunities and challenges to startups. We expect that the scientific
results obtained in our project will fill in the knowledge gap in the literature by adding a better
understanding of remote work in startups. For entrepreneurs and startup teams, the scientific
results could support them to work more sustainably in remote work settings. The results can
also be utilized by business incubators to better support startups.
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