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Is there only one type of successful entrepreneurial ecosystem? This paper applies qualitative comparative analysis to identify and analyse configurations of regional entrepreneurial ecosystems in Europe. We test two rivalling causal logics: a completeness logic stating that all entrepreneurial ecosystem elements need to be present and the weakest link is the most important constraint, and a substitutability logic arguing that elements are substitutable. High entrepreneurship outputs can be realised with different entrepreneurial ecosystem configurations. However, focusing on regions with the highest entrepreneurship outputs, our results point at the importance of a complete entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Female smallholder farmers in low-income countries face barriers to accessing capital and commodity markets. While agricultural cooperatives provide services that contribute to the income and productivity of small-scale producers, evidence of cooperatives' social and economic empowerment of female smallholders remains limited. We apply Sen's capability approach to female entrepreneurs' socioeconomic empowerment to examine whether women's participation in a coffee and microfinance cooperative from rural western Uganda benefits their social and economic position within their household. First, we study the relationship between women's cooperative participation and their household coffee sales and savings. Second, we investigate the link between women's cooperative participation and their intra-household decision-making and whether the inclusion of the husband in his wife's cooperative strengthens or lowers women's decision-making power.

This study analyses the relationship between geographic space, social networks, and financial knowledge in interregional equity crowdfunding flows based on the concept of financial ecology. Using data from a leading Dutch equity crowdfunding platform, we find that interregional crowdfunding investment decreases with geographic distance. Furthermore, the negative effect of distance is weaker if interregional social networks are strong and if the investor region has a high concentration of the financial industry. The results extend the conceptual foundation of financial ecology by explaining how individual behaviors affect the macro-level output of a financial ecology.

This study investigates the impact of blended finance investments and green venture capital on improving entrepreneurial ecosystems in African countries. The primary aim is to understand the relationship between development finance for sustainable development and entrepreneurial ecosystems in developing countries, highlighting the particular mechanisms and dynamics different from those in the Western world. This research conducts a comprehensive quantitative analysis using the latest available data. Using a sample of 27 countries in Africa, three hypotheses are used to test how blended finance investments are distributed, what is their long term relationship with entrepreneurial ecosystems, and whether there is a interaction effect between green venture capital and blended finance. The findings indicate a positive and significant relationship between blended finance and the quality of entrepreneurial ecosystems. Conversely, the effect of green venture capital activity on entrepreneurial ecosystems remains unclear. These results suggest that targeted financial investments can enhance entrepreneurial ecosystems while promoting sustainable development. However, they also highlight the need for a more holistic approach, particularly focused on riskier and less developed countries. For practitioners and policymakers, these findings underscore the importance of strategic co-investment and supportive policies to foster favorable conditions for entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial and development finance across Africa.

COVID-19 forced many businesses to rapidly adapt to new circumstances. While firms could not foresee this shock, some were better able to adapt than others. This required firms to quickly and efficiently process new information from both external and internal sources. To what extent and how are absorptive capacity and quality of management practices important in this setting? We expect a high level of absorptive capacity to enable firms to efficiently gather and process external information, whereas good management practices helps them to deal with internal information. To test these hypotheses, we run a large scale survey among companies in the Netherlands to assess their level of absorptive capacity and the quality of their management practices. We relate this to their level of adaptiveness, measured in terms of firms’ pivot toward online revenue sources during COVID-19. We find that firms with greater absorptive capacity and greater quality of management practices earned a higher share of their revenues online. This suggests that absorptive capacity and management practices enable firms to adapt successfully in response to the COVID-19 shock.

Many regions and countries aim to copy a Silicon Valley model of entrepreneurship-led development. We argue that this is misguided, in general, and in low income economies even more. We advocate an alternative approach that can be adapted to local context, with respect to both conditions and outcomes. We focus on a context with low incomes and massive population growth, with large cohorts of youngsters entering the economy: Africa. In this context there is a huge need for well-functioning entrepreneurial ecosystems to enable private sector development and more fundamentally to have the talents of a large new generation flourish and to tackle gigantic sustainable development challenges. We argue that for the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach to be useful for African economies it needs to be meaningful for the stakeholders involved, and that this can be achieved with locally-embedded narratives about the future of entrepreneurship in Africa. We analyze entrepreneurial ecosystem narratives that inform theory and policy practice of entrepreneurship-led development in Africa. Our argument is that for Africa, and other low income economy contexts as well, we need to embrace entrepreneurial ecosystem narratives that suit the local context and envisioned futures of the local stakeholders

This virtual special issue includes research on the effects of crises, in particular the COVID-19 pandemic, on entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial responses to deal with consequences of crises. This issue highlights how crises affect entrepreneurs’ well-being and reinforce the importance of agency of entrepreneurs and other citizens. The special issue also highlights the need for resilience; the ability of entrepreneurs, organizations, and economies to absorb and adapt to shocks; and how it can be strengthened. We discuss the importance of data in times of crisis and the greater need for engaged scholarship.

Entrepreneurial ecosystems have developed from a powerful idea and concept into a transdisciplinary research program, increasing our understanding into entrepreneurship-led development and providing actionable knowledge for improving the conditions for entrepreneurship and development. In this monograph we take stock of the progress to date and synthesize the findings of 181 empirical scientific entrepreneurial ecosystem studies through a systematic literature review. We organize the review around five key mechanisms that explain the nature and development of entrepreneurial ecosystems: (1) interdependence of its elements, (2) upward causation explaining entrepreneurial ecosystem outputs and (3) outcomes, (4) downward causation and path dependence, and (5) inter-ecosystem links. We summarize the findings and outline opportunities for research and discuss policy implications in the light of a transdisciplinary entrepreneurial ecosystem research program. This monograph is of interest for scholars of all academic disciplines that provide knowledge that is relevant for the understanding of entrepreneurial ecosystems, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship-led development, but also for all stakeholders involved in the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems.

This virtual special issue includes research on the effects of crises, in particular the COVID-19 pandemic, on entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial responses to deal with consequences of crises. This issue highlights how crises affect entrepreneurs’ well-being and reinforce the importance of agency of entrepreneurs and other citizens. The special issue also highlights the need for resilience; the ability of entrepreneurs, organizations, and economies to absorb and adapt to shocks; and how it can be strengthened. We discuss the importance of data in times of crisis and the greater need for engaged scholarship.

The process of structural change is investigated in six European regions that were recently confronted with a severe decline in manufacturing jobs. Entrepreneurs are key actors in this process, as they are the agents driving creative destruction that is needed to transform the economy. The entrepreneurial ecosystem of each of the regions is analysed using ecosystem metrics and case study methods. Having a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem helps regions to be resilient to shocks, such as a decline in traditional industries or closures of large focal firms. Institutions, knowledge, and skilled labour play key roles in a successful economic transformation. Formal institutions can provide the leadership and investment needed to quickly adapt to shocks, as shown in the West Midlands (UK), Eindhoven (NL), and Oulu (Finland). The cases of Sofia, Bulgaria, and the Ruhr region, Germany, show however that a strong ecosystem does not guarantee a swift structural transformation. To explain these exceptions, it is important to consider the economic history and regional context. For example, a strong dependence on one industry or firm can create a lock-in effect that prevents resilience in the face of shocks. When diagnosing ecosystems to inform policies, it is therefore crucial to combine metrics with a thorough understanding of the regional context.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation, but with substantial regional differences in the speed of this transformation. In this paper we show that the COVID-19 pandemic favors the prepared region: regions with a high quality entrepreneurial ecosystem seem to be more adaptive in the sense of revealing a more rapid digital transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper we analyzed this spatially uneven digital transformation with data on (1) startups (new retail web shops) and (2) established firms (new entrants on the largest e-commerce platform in the Netherlands) in the 40 city regions of the Netherlands.

Research on entrepreneurship and economic development has emphasized the local bias of entrepreneurship. We question this local bias and show the relevance of startups founded by non-locals and interregional flows of non-local founders in Italy. In general, the quality of entrepreneurial economies is positively related to the creation of local startups, providing evidence for creation mechanisms. However, the majority of startups in Italy has at least one non-local founder. Using the Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood gravity model and a novel machine learning application of the Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood postestimation techniques based on LASSO, we show evidence that also interregional attraction and supply mechanisms are at work. Increasing the quality of the entrepreneurial economy leads to higher levels of entrepreneurship locally via attraction of entrepreneurial talent from other regions, but also increases the supply non-local founders to other higher quality entrepreneurial economies.

Despite the popularity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach in science and policy, there is a scarcity of credible, accurate and comparable metrics of entrepreneurial ecosystems. This is a severe shortcoming for both scientific progress and successful policy. In this paper, we bridge the entrepreneurial ecosystem metrics gap. Entrepreneurial ecosystems consist of the actors and factors that enable entrepreneurship. We use the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach to quantify and qualify entrepreneurial economies. We operationalize the elements and outputs of entrepreneurial ecosystems for 273 European regions. The ecosystem elements show strong and positive correlations with each other, confirming the systemic nature of entrepreneurial economies and the need for a complex systems perspective. Our analyses show that physical infrastructure, finance, formal institutions, and talent take a central position in the interdependence web, providing a first indication of these elements as fundamental conditions of entrepreneurial ecosystems. The measures of the elements are used to calculate an index that approximates the quality of entrepreneurial ecosystems. This index is robust and performs well in regressions to predict entrepreneurial output, which we measure with novel data on productive entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurial ecosystem approach and the metrics we present provide a lens for public policy to better diagnose, understand and improve entrepreneurial economies.

Entrepreneurial ecosystems have become a prominent concept, yet in its current state, the concept itself represents a paradox. While it draws on a rich intellectual history and provides an opportunity to synthesize different strands of research, it is also under-theorized and the mechanisms that govern ecosystem evolution are not well understood. This paper takes stock of recent advancements in ecosystem scholarship and synthesizes the empirical reality of the causal mechanisms. We use these dynamics to position ecosystems in a broader context, within and beyond the domain of entrepreneurship research, and propose a transdisciplinary research program for ecosystem research and practice.