Abstract
This paper transfers the concept of entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) to tourism. First it investigates the characteristic of an EE in tourism by comparing it to an existing model. Second, the sector-specificity of the EE in tourism is discussed by referring to the system’s boundaries, operations and purposes, thus linking research on EEs in tourism more strongly to key concepts of systems theory. This is done by evaluating 19 interviews from South Tyrol in a qualitative approach using GABEK (Holistic Processing of Linguistic Complexity), which includes rule-based coding of interviews and visualisation of results in a network graph. Results show that the evaluated EE in tourism shares features familiar to EEs in other business sectors. This is an elevated role of long-standing entrepreneurs, social networks, governance, shared knowledge and learning. However, there are also tourism-specific features, such as culture and landscape, which directly provide resources for entrepreneurship. Governance does not emerge from the interaction of entrepreneurs, but from public bodies. The system’s output is not ambitious entrepreneurship, but innovative, sustainable and collective entrepreneurship. However, there is the need for further research to clearly determine the system’s sector specificity.
Highlights
In recent decades, extensive research on competitive advantage from a territorial perspective has emerged, some of it relating to regional innovation systems, industrial districts or clusters
We look at the empirical case of South Tyrol from the systemic perspective to see whether Stam’s (2015) and Stam and van de Ven’s (2021) model of EEs may be applied in a tourism context
Characteristics of the Tourism Entrepreneurial Ecosystem (TEE) in South Tyrol Data analysis provided a list of 2297 keywords, which were thematically clustered in a reduced shortlist of 605
Summary
Extensive research on competitive advantage from a territorial perspective has emerged, some of it relating to regional innovation systems, industrial districts or clusters. EEs have been described as “supportive regional environments” that promote high-growth entrepreneurship (Cavallo, Ghezzi & Balocco, 2018; Stam, 2015). Potential entrepreneurs access these supportive environments as “common good” (Autio & Levie, 2017) or as a collective “capacity of the territory” (Neumeyer & Corbett, 2017)
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