Abstract
This paper considers the entrepreneurial ecosystem concept, which in recent years has gained interest from a variety of perspectives including entrepreneurship, management, and economic geography. Specifically, the paper identifies a gap in the literature regarding the concept's sectoral or industrial focus. Prior applications to real‐world case studies have focused on a fairly narrow range of industries and places. In this paper, we apply the concept to a case study of one creative and cultural industry, the fashion industry, to help us understand not only the performance and function of entrepreneurs and small businesses in this industries, but also potential policy supports. We map the institutions and spaces in Toronto's entrepreneurial ecosystem, drawing on extensive qualitative research to consider the dynamics and interactions therein. In parallel, we advance the concept theoretically, questioning its tenability and applicability in a wider range of economic systems by adding the perspective of cultural and creative industries.
Highlights
As researchers of cultural and creative industries (CCIs), interested in concepts that help us to explain, understand, and build better policy frameworks for local economic development, we see several gaps in this canon of work
We propose that cultural and creative industries offer a fruitful field of research for scholars of local economic development and entrepreneurship, especially in terms of industry structure, firm size, symbolic knowledge base, and concentration of spatial granularity
We study CCIs, via the fashion industry, our research speaks to recent contributions unpacking the EE approach in various contexts, such as maternal healthcare in South Africa (Grobbelaar and Uriona‐Maldonado 2020), Porto’s cultural and creative economy (Loots et al 2020), and efforts to orchestrate EEs in Colombia (Porras‐Paez and Schmutzler 2020) and Finland (Nordling 2019)
Summary
The entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) framework provides the foundation for an analysis of the institutions, actors, and organizations within the Toronto fashion industry. There is a need for EE research to move beyond successful, high‐tech and/or masculinized cases to consider a broader range of entrepreneurial spaces and actors. This paper considers the entrepreneurial ecosystem concept, which in recent years has gained interest from a variety of perspectives including entrepreneurship, management, and economic geography. We apply the concept to a case study of one creative and cultural industry, the fashion industry, to help us understand the performance and function of entrepreneurs and small businesses in this industries, and potential policy supports. We map the institutions and spaces in Toronto’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, drawing on extensive qualitative research to consider the dynamics and interactions therein. We advance the concept theoretically, questioning its tenability and applicability in a wider range of economic systems by adding the perspective of cultural and creative industries.
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