The complexity of entrepreneurial ecosystem evolution and new venture policy: The case of the U.S. commercial space ecosystem

Abstract

Recent scrutiny on policy interventions to promote start-ups has increased attention toward stimulating more innovative, high-growth ventures. Responding to the shortcomings in such interventions, scholars call for more attention to contexts in which new ventures emerge and how policies can shape the environment to be more conducive to venturing. The concept of an entrepreneurial ecosystem is a valuable framework for understanding such a context as it highlights the evolutionary and interdependent complexity of such a system. How this complexity affects the effectiveness of policy interventions, however, remains unclear. Applying a complex adaptive systems framework, we study the U.S. commercial space ecosystem to examine its evolution and the role policy interventions play. Our analysis suggests that by understanding an emerging ecosystem as a complex adaptive system, policy makers can be more effective by appropriately selecting, targeting, and timing interventions to match the unique nature of individual, targeted components of the system.