Original title: Looking inside the spiky bits: a critical review and conceptualisation of entrepreneurial ecosystems
An entrepreneurial ecosystemThe connected people and conditions that shape entrepreneurship in a place. is the mix of people and conditions that support businesses aiming to grow. The paper reviews how researchers define and measure these ecosystems, and how policy makers use the idea. It argues that ecosystems differ widely, so it proposes a preliminary grouping of common types. Its conclusion is that each type may need its own policy response.
A school’s sports teams need different things: one may lack practice space, while another needs more coaching. Treating both problems with the same fix can leave each team stuck. In this paper, the teams stand for different entrepreneurial ecosystems, and the tailored fixes stand for policies shaped to each ecosystem’s particular needs.
Policy makers trying to support new businesses can miss what makes a particular place work if they treat every ecosystem as the same. This review argues that ecosystems vary in their actors and scale, so support should be tailored to each one.
The taxonomy is described as preliminary, so the abstract does not establish it as a complete or tested classification. It also does not report empirical results showing how well particular tailored policies work.
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Looking inside the spiky bits: a critical review and conceptualisation of entrepreneurial ecosystems — Ross Brown, Colin M. Mason — Small Business Economics — doi:10.1007/s11187-017-9865-7
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.