Affinities between Different Entrepreneurial Ecosystems and Economic Zones

Abstract

Entrepreneurial ecosystems can take different forms, some of the conspicuous ones are country, city, cluster and economic zone. All these four entrepreneurial ecosystems are based on certain variables which affect their characteristics, performance, and impact. The models for evaluating entrepreneurial ecosystems based in a country, city, and a cluster are well established but there is no standardized and empirical model to evaluate economic zone based entrepreneurial ecosystems. In this paper, a methodology is adopted and re-designed to evaluate the relationships or affinities between the four types of entrepreneurial ecosystems. This study lays the theoretical foundation for a comprehensive empirical study for analyzing economic zone entrepreneurial ecosystems, based on the proposed model, for gaining insight and direction on how to create and optimize economic zone as instruments of national competitive advantage. The key questions that are discussed in this study are – why are entrepreneurial ecosystems relevant? what are the variables that drive entrepreneurial ecosystems? which model can be applied to assess affinities between four selected entrepreneurial ecosystem types? what learnings from study of these affinities can be applied to develop economic zone based entrepreneurial ecosystems? The results show a positive correlation between economic zone and cluster and city, based on data from WEF survey on entrepreneurial ecosystems collected on 8-pillars and 38 sub-variables, through responses from 1000 entrepreneurs across 49countries. The results provide a basis to foster advanced research in understanding and experimenting with economic zone based entrepreneurial ecosystems, and re-designing and deploying already existent models for evaluating economic zones.