Entrepreneurial ecosystems as a bridging concept? A conceptual contribution to the debate on entrepreneurship and regional development

Abstract

This paper explores the potential of considering entrepreneurial ecosystems as a bridging concept that enables a trans‐disciplinary exchange. We aim to contribute to the debate by offering a perspective that takes entrepreneurial ecosystems out of their systemic—often geographically fixed—notion of administrative and territorial boundaries by offering a novel conceptual understanding of it. So far, entrepreneurial ecosystems are appreciated for first exhibiting conceptual strengths in terms of integrating entrepreneurs as economic actors (rather than firms as the smallest unit of analysis), and, second, considering entrepreneurship as a process that focuses on the co‐evolution of entrepreneurial activities and their institutional environment. Criticism of this concept arises on its simplification by translating social elements into entrepreneurial ecosystem terminologies and on focusing on quantifiable indicators for measuring and comparing regional ecosystems rather than appreciating the complexity and interrelatedness of qualitative dimensions and their temporal dynamics. Against this background, we first argue for expanding the debate on entrepreneurial ecosystems by paying particular attention to the spatial as well as to temporal dynamics of entrepreneurship and its environment. Second, we regard entrepreneurial ecosystems as a communicative bridge that enables a fruitful exchange between academic disciplines and practitioners rather than approaching the concept as a mono‐disciplinary theoretical framework.

The city of start‐ups: Location determinants of start‐ups in emergent industries in Barcelona

“…Recent contributions suggest that the impact of EE cannot be deduced from a knowledge function of its elements which not consider the complexity and interrelatedness of qualitative dimensions (Lange & Schmidt, 2020; Stam & van de Ven, 2021). For this reason, we proposed measuring the quality of the EE in a composite index.…”

“…Empirical evidence testing the impact of EE on the location of start‐ups within a city is, however, scarce (Andersson & Hellerstedt, 2009; Audretsch et al., 2010; Bosma & Sternberg, 2014) and, in any case, mostly focused on the US case (Florida & Mellander, 2016; Lee et al., 2004). Analysis on the contribution of EE adapted to the context of European cities are especially necessary (Fritsch & Wyrwich, 2020a, 2020b; Lange & Schmidt, 2020; Stam & van de Ven, 2021).…”

Platform ecology: A user‐centric and relational conceptualization of online platforms

“…Platforms with different affordances can be combined in complementary ways to perform one task. We refer to such integration practices as ‘ bridging ’ (see Table 1; Lange & Schmidt, 2021). For instance, an artist may accompany her crowdfunding campaign with simultaneous posts on Facebook or Instagram and thereby try to mobilize followers to support the campaign (Wang, 2016).…”

Taking the systems approaches out of their comfort zones: Perspectives from under explored contexts

“…Lange and Schmidt (2020) also add a theoretical paper to the collection. They explore the role of the entrepreneurial ecosystems concept as a communicative bridge enabling exchange on an interdisciplinary level as well as between academics and practitioners.…”