Entrepreneurial ecosystems : theory revisited, research agenda and policies

Abstract

The aim of this research is to expand the knowledge on entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem theory as explanatory frameworks of different contexts. The concept of a local, regional and national entrepreneurial ecosystem have been increasingly studied, especially during the last decade. From academic authors with rather disparate backgrounds to reports from international organizations and institutions, there is an increasing number of studies about the interactions of those agents that compete, cooperate and contribute to set the conditions that influence the emergence and development of entrepreneurial and/or innovative activities in a specific location. Despite the nuances among their approaches, it is possible to observe some key shared features delimiting the notion of the entrepreneurial ecosystem regarding: (i) the complex interdependency among actors and factors and the dynamic evolution of their relationships; (ii) the conception of entrepreneurship not only as an outcome but also considering the entrepreneur as a fundamental part of the system; and (iii) the need for a holistic approach to analyze the evolution of the system and to evaluate its performance. In addition, much of the discussion of entrepreneurial ecosystems has lacked a time dimension and, as a consequence, the existing explanatory frameworks are useful as general taxonomies of domains but not as representations of the role and impact of the entrepreneurial activity of a given place over time. Similarly, all the contributions on entrepreneurial ecosystems also agree on the critical role of the policy domain as a key context for entrepreneurship, that is, in setting the framework conditions for the development of entrepreneurial activities. The study of how public policies could enhance entrepreneurial ecosystems has attracted the attention of academia, international organizations and practitioners. However despite this interest, knowledge on the topic is still in its early stages from both the research and policy perspectives. Two main reasons explain this lack of maturity. First, there is still a range of controversies about how the policy interventions should be configured and also about what should be the policy rationales and justification. Related to this, there is not enough granular analysis on the evolution of the policy agenda able to identify main themes and foundational concepts, establishing patterns and finding temporal relations between different approaches and geographies. Therefore, in summing the previous considerations, there is still room to improve the understanding of the dynamics of the entrepreneurial ecosystem from the perspective of public policies. Within this context, this thesis contributes to answer the following question: ‘How does the policy domain impact on the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems?’. Methodologically, this thesis has adopted a pragmatic research philosophy, considering that entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems represent not a single but multiple realities. Consequently, the research requires a deductive and exploratory approach and the research design is based on mixed methods both qualitative (case study) and quantitative (text mining techniques). The structure of the thesis is summarized in Figure 1 (p. 13, chapter 1). After the initial introductory chapter in which the main aspects and objectives of the thesis are delineated, the literature review (chapter 2) sets the context within the research on entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems, concluding with the main research gaps in the field. Furthermore, building on previous developments by Babson College and the OECD, an advanced conceptual framework for the representation of the entrepreneurial ecosystems is proposed as a theoretical contribution. Then, the investigation is divided into three consecutive phases, described in chapter 3 (methodology) and chapter 4 (results). • Phase 1 explores the key topics, gaps, trends and shifts that have shaped the entrepreneurship policy research agenda to date by using a range of text mining and cluster analysis techniques. The sample under analysis is a corpus of 1,048 academic papers focused on entrepreneurship-related policies and published during the period 1990–2016 in ten relevant journals. The results of the analysis show that inclusion, employment and regulation-related papers have largely dominated the research in the field, evolving from an initial classical approach to the relationship between entrepreneurship and employment to a wider, multidisciplinary perspective, including the relevance of management, geographies and narrower topics such as agglomeration economics or internationalization instead of the previous generic sectorial approaches. Overall, the text mining analysis reveals how entrepreneurship policy research has gained increasing attention and has become both more open, with a growing cooperation among researchers from different affiliations, and more sophisticated, with concepts and themes that moved the research agenda forward, closer to the priorities of policy implementation. • Phase 2 applies the same text mining workflow as in phase 1 to study the evolution of the policy domain in the EU. Particularly, this phase aims to identify the key topics and concepts in the EU policy agenda on entrepreneurship over time. The sample under analysis is a corpus of 576 selected EC communications related to entrepreneurship during the period 1990-2016. As main finding, the EU entrepreneurship policy agenda can be considered to have started in the early 2000s, coinciding with the launch of the Lisbon Agenda and has followed a learning curve during the last two decades, moving from vague and naive support to increasingly targeted measures, and to early maturity during the last years under analysis. Furthermore, as the analysis considers the evolution of the EU policy cycle, it could be added that the focus of policymakers’ discourse shifts every five years, coinciding precisely with the EU policy cycle. This suggests that every new College of Commissioners aims to bring their ideas to the agenda. Another relevant insight is that this evolution has not been completely homogenous: initially, themes appeared disconnected in time and scope, but later displayed potential influences and continuity from previous stages. The empirical findings of the first two phases permit to add an additional qualitative analysis to provide a retrospective view of the emergence and configuration of both EU policy and academic bodies looking for potential linkages and/or differences among them (chapter 5). This combined examination contributes to the discussion on the relationships between research and policy, specifically focusing on entrepreneurship policy in the EU. As main output, the analysis displays three main stages, each of them containing two further sub-stages for the period under study (1990 – 2016) in which main themes from the two corpora/perspectives are compared. This analysis shows that EU policy and the interests of academia are increasingly aligned over time, which could be interpreted as a symptom of early maturity as both can now rely on data to study the impact of different types of learning, increasing the speed and depth of the learning process. • Phase 3 adopts a totally different methodology to study the role of policy when developing innovation and entrepreneurial economies in China, probably the most paradigmatic alternative non-Western socioeconomic model. The approach, time frame for development and availability of data sources are completely different from the case of the European Union, so this phase is based on a case study about the AI innovation ecosystem. The analysis proposes a revisited asymmetric Triple Helix (ATH) model, as shown in Fig. 11, and the qualitative analysis of the AI innovation ecosystem is based on both an in-depth document review and also on interviews with experts. The results show how a favourable context, the broad adoption rate and the competition for talent and capital among regional-specialized clusters are boosting the advance of AI in China, mainly in the business to customer arena. All in all, the entrepreneurial ecosystem, that is, the wider area of entrepreneurial domains, agents, roles, and interactions, is a field that has been increasingly explored, especially during the last decade. Despite this popularity, a variety of controversies has emerged especially around the role of policy domain. Within this frame of reference, the last chapter in this thesis provides the conclusions of the investigation. As main output, it compiles a range of theoretical, empirical and methodological contributions for both researchers and policymakers in the field, aiming to improve the understanding of entrepreneurial (and innovation) ecosystems and the role of public policy on their formation, evolution and performance.