Multinational companies’ roles in start-up incubation ecosystems: The case of Microsoft Innovation Centers in Brazil

Uncharted waters of the entrepreneurial ecosystems research: Comparing Greater Istanbul and Reading ecosystems

“…“ Headquarters of multinationals in Reading do not use their knowledge and finance to directly sponsor small businesses and make it grow, but they could do it, ” which is not exactly the same with prior studies, as, for example for Brazil, they demonstrated a very active role of multinationals in supporting small business (Nordling et al., 2020).…”

“…First, the regional economic policy aims to promote entrepreneurship as an engine of economic growth. As our findings show, government support needs to be combined with other EE drivers such as university programmes toward entrepreneurship, technopark, and incubator activity, as well as with the role that multinationals can play in the EE (Nordling et al, 2020) and the local institutions as EE connectors. Depending on the underlying regional EE characteristics, additional policy measures are required to reveal the strongest pillar and create a combination where entrepreneurial activity can be enhanced.…”

“…The first element of EE is entrepreneurial actors . This pillar includes some major institutions that foster entrepreneurship activity, such as mentorship, incubators, and accelerators (Nordling et al., 2020). The second element is the entrepreneurial resource providers (e.g., banks, venture capital firms, business angels, and other financial institutions).…”

“…“ Chamber of Commerce is a major actor in the ecosystem, and we should be doing more to support small businesses; instead, most activities are focused on multinationals and established businesses ” (R16). This focus on multinationals is very strategic as the experience of Microsoft Innovation Centers (MIC) in Brazil demonstrates that the way collaboration is organized between interdependent actors in the EE and multinationals can provide start‐up incubation facilities and foster regional development (Nordling et al., 2020). This remark underlines a possible weakness of Reading EE, which is a focus on medium and large start‐ups often as subsidiaries of powerful multinational enterprises, and not on connecting them with the start‐up infrastructure.…”

“…The research on EEs has grown quickly in recent years (Acs et al., 2018; Godley et al., 2019; Nordling et al., 2020; Qian et al., 2013; Spigel, 2017). High importance has been attributed to the concept as it contributes toward helping scholars to think systemically when considering entrepreneurship activity across various sectoral, institutional, and local contexts (Partridge et al., 2019; Tsvetkova et al., 2019).…”