Entrepreneurial ecosystems: economic, technological, and societal impacts

Abstract

Despite the overwhelming use of the metaphor ‘ecosystem’ in academia, industry, policy, and management, exact definitions of what ‘ecosystems’ really comprise are scarce and often inconsistent. Existing vague descriptions in the literature do not consider the boundaries of respective agglomerations, hence, they impede the evaluation of performance and outcome measures of respective ecosystems. This special issue is a first attempt to trace the ‘ecosystem’ discussion back to its roots—the ancient oikos, coined by the Greek philosopher Hesiod (700 BC), and aims to critically reflect on the usage of the term ‘ecosystem’, briefly summarize the extant literature and grasp the main features of entrepreneurial ecosystems, namely the economic, technological, and societal dimensions of entrepreneurial ecosystems. We intend to focus on the key elements that characterize an ecosystem, and hence, untangle under what conditions entrepreneurial firms shape and influence economic, technological, and societal thinking within their ecosystem.

Opening the black box of academic entrepreneurship: a bibliometric analysis

“…Specifically, the bibliometric literature analysis results indicate that this research domain can be linked within the academic entrepreneurship ecosystem. The results are in line with previous research, and indicate that academic entrepreneurship is a dynamic, multilayered ecosystem with actors at the individual, organizational, and institutional levels (Audretsch et al 2019;Guerrero and Urbano 2012;Harrison and Leitch 2010;Hayter et al 2018;Miranda et al 2018;Perkmann et al 2013).…”

“…At the institutional level, governmental authorities and universities should collaborate to ensure consistent support during various academic entrepreneurship stages. However, more research is needed to help us to understand the challenges of setting up such collaborative agreements between academic and institutional actors, and the critical mechanisms for the governance and sustainability of such networks to establish an entrepreneurial environment (Audretsch et al 2019). Specifically, future studies should focus on institutional differences' roles in terms of multiple dimensions such as regulative, normative, and cultural institutions for academic entrepreneurship, and should explicitly address the interactions between nested variables , and ensure distributed value creation for economic, technological and societal benefits.…”

“…Specifically, future studies should focus on institutional differences' roles in terms of multiple dimensions such as regulative, normative, and cultural institutions for academic entrepreneurship, and should explicitly address the interactions between nested variables , and ensure distributed value creation for economic, technological and societal benefits. Furthermore, it is worthwhile to examine to what extent is it possible to replicate such ecosystems in different environments (Audretsch et al 2019). Also, we need a greater emphasis on contextual dynamism, in terms of legislative and institutional changes (Fini et al 2011).…”

Entrepreneurial ecosystems: a dynamic lifecycle model

“…As mentioned in the introduction, there has been a growing research focus on entrepreneurial ecosystems as a subset in analyzing geographically bounded agglomeration effects (see Audretsch et al, 2019b). The concept of entrepreneurial ecosystems has been increasingly used by policy makers in their analysis of policy issues with respect to entrepreneurship and economic development.…”

“…They live or interact in conjunction with nonliving components like universities, incubators, and companies where the "eco" part of the word is assumed to be related to the environment, either local, regional, or national where all parts together function and constitute a unit-the ecosystem (see Ritala & Almpanopoulou, 2017). The academic literature in this sense treats the "ecosystem" as a metaphor, a new concept, to gain a high attention in the initial state (see Audretsch et al, 2019b;Acs et al 2017a,b), attracting more and more interest, and to become an academic "hot spot" and then almost burn up. While the metaphor is widely used and, as any innovative idea spreads, so do the misconceptions and mythologies.…”