An Exploration of an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem for Biopharma SMEs in a Second-Tier Region.

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are a hot topic in academia as they are being adopted by governments as regional structures to improve entrepreneurship and innovation; nevertheless, their rapid implementation at a policy level has highlighted theoretical gaps regarding their genesis and development. For instance, contemporary policy adoption in the life sciences is typically built on the premise that establishing entrepreneurial ecosystems in second tier regions will encourage entrepreneurial performance as seen in first tier regions such as Boston, USA and the Oxford -- Cambridge - London 'Golden Triangle' in the UK. To address theoretical concerns over such homogeneous approaches, we focus on one second tier region in the North of the UK that outperforms comparable second tier region, to investigate the influence of contextual factors such as the regional legacy and entrepreneurial interactions between local organisations without the munificent resources available within first tier regions. We deployed cognitive proximity as a theoretical lens to build a temporal framework depicting the interactions between the different organisations in this entrepreneurial ecosystem that were found to support entrepreneurial activities by the SMEs contributing the most significant entrepreneurial outcomes. We conclude that regional stakeholders specialised in facilitating interactions between organisations within ecosystems can be substitutes for a lack of private funding or regional government policy by enabling SMEs to engage in activities such as specialised networking, open innovation and business development activities that are challenging to implement outside of first tier regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]