A Systematic Comparison of the US and EU Startup Ecosystems of Cultivated Meat

Abstract

One of the most pressing challenges facing modern society is the need to feed the growing world’s population with increasingly limited resources. Cultivated meat has the potential to mitigate precisely this challenge, while simultaneously minimizing negative externalities such as environmental destruction. Hence, our research provides a detailed analysis of the current developments in the cultivated meat industry. Specifically, we provide an in-depth comparison of the United States and the European Union entrepreneurial ecosystems of cultivated meat. The resulting empirical findings originate from the geographic mapping of ecosystem indicators, comprising (a) cultivated meat startups, (b) investors, and (c) research institutions, and from qualitative expert interviews. The evaluation of the synthesized findings indicates that the US entrepreneurial ecosystem is more mature than the EU ecosystem and thus exhibits superior performance in most ecosystem domains. However, both ecosystems face the same core challenges. These challenges comprise the need to achieve regulatory approval, cost-parity, and open access knowledge-sharing. Consequently, we provide generalizable best practices and tailored recommendations to overcome these challenges based on the implications of the systematic analysis.