The Role of Place in Emerging Fields: A Comparative Study of ICT Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in Japan

Abstract

This paper highlights how place matters for the development of smaller entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs), developing in a situation when a dominant EE is already present within given national institutional boundaries (here: Japan). The findings show that smaller EEs of Osaka-Kyoto and Fukuoka have similar institutional gaps in their institutional infrastructure (e.g. gaps in funding, and in the access to information and expertise from successful startups), and in response their stakeholders engage in similar types of actions to obtain the missing elements. However, the existing and expected outcomes of these actions are found to be moderated by certain elements underlying the EEs’ institutional infrastructure – local resources (stronger in Osaka-Kyoto), and place cohesion (stronger in Fukuoka). The latter is a concept newly identified and defined in the paper. The findings of this paper have theoretical implications for research about EEs and for comparative study of organisational fields.