We critically examine how an entrepreneurial ecosystem is structured using an exploratory and bottom-up approach. Past studies in this area have discussed the presence of elements in the system or captured the ecosystem as holistically as possible by extending to social, cultural, and institutional dimension. However, we find that such aggregated conceptualizations gave limited understanding to how different elements are connected and constitute the system. Here, we apply a social network approach by analyzing the connections of the ecosystem at multiple layers: (1) among entrepreneurs, (2) among support organizations, and (3) between and among entrepreneurs and key support organizations. Through a series of interviews with entrepreneurs and support organizations in St. Louis, we find that the ways in which support organizations in this region interacted with each other and with entrepreneurs, including explicit cross-organizational collaboration and strategic structuring of resources, significantly impacted the way that entrepreneurs interacted with one another and with organizations, thus deepening our understanding of these connections and identifying intervening points within the ecosystem.

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Recent research has shown that the job-creating potential of new, young and growing companies is vital to the U.S. economy. Other studies show that a community's entrepreneur support network-the organizations and institutions that make up its "ecosystem"-is critical for new firms to succeed. What we do not know much about, however, is how to establish such an effective local ecosystem. Traditional methods used to evaluate entrepreneurial ecosystems have focused on sizing up risk capital, incubators, a supportive culture, or other elements in an entrepreneurial community. We believe there is significant room for improvement by focusing instead on the relationships between these elements and the evolution of an ecosystem over time. As a region seeks to successfully cultivate entrepreneurship, a keen understanding of how, when, or why different players interact with one another and how the ecosystem evolves is likely to make both public-and private-sector behavior more effective. Similarly, to identify potential policy implications, it is far more useful to analyze how successful ecosystems have developed over time-particularly how each got its start-than to attempt to copy a developed ecosystem. This research is based on a case study of the startup ecosystem (a segment of an entrepreneurial ecosystem) in the St. Louis area. St. Louis was chosen because it has not been known as an entrepreneurial hub and because the recent, substantial transformation of its local entrepreneurship ecosystem provides greater implications for the evolution of the ecosystem.

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Knowledge about connections within a local economic system holds implication for understanding the ways in which individuals and categories of entrepreneurs access the system itself and resources provided within. While scholars have recently found complex divisions of networks within local entrepreneurship ecosystems, we still have a limited understanding about why these chasms exist. We present a case study with qualitative research in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of St. Louis, Missouri, which identifies structural sources of divergence in networks. Specifically, we find a gender gap in the ecosystem that reveals patterns of difference in access to resources and in the experiences of women relative to men entrepreneurs. Thus, we contribute a more nuanced understanding of how discrete elements within a system’s networks diverge, as well as identifying the root causes of this divergence. The article concludes with implications for theories and practice.

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