Entrepreneurial ecosystems as a bridging concept? A conceptual contribution to the debate on entrepreneurship and regional development

Bastian Lange and Suntje Schmidt

Growth and Change, 2021, vol. 52, issue 2, 790-807

Abstract: This paper explores the potential of considering entrepreneurial ecosystems as a bridging concept that enables a trans‐disciplinary exchange. We aim to contribute to the debate by offering a perspective that takes entrepreneurial ecosystems out of their systemic—often geographically fixed—notion of administrative and territorial boundaries by offering a novel conceptual understanding of it. So far, entrepreneurial ecosystems are appreciated for first exhibiting conceptual strengths in terms of integrating entrepreneurs as economic actors (rather than firms as the smallest unit of analysis), and, second, considering entrepreneurship as a process that focuses on the co‐evolution of entrepreneurial activities and their institutional environment. Criticism of this concept arises on its simplification by translating social elements into entrepreneurial ecosystem terminologies and on focusing on quantifiable indicators for measuring and comparing regional ecosystems rather than appreciating the complexity and interrelatedness of qualitative dimensions and their temporal dynamics. Against this background, we first argue for expanding the debate on entrepreneurial ecosystems by paying particular attention to the spatial as well as to temporal dynamics of entrepreneurship and its environment. Second, we regard entrepreneurial ecosystems as a communicative bridge that enables a fruitful exchange between academic disciplines and practitioners rather than approaching the concept as a mono‐disciplinary theoretical framework.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/grow.12409

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:growch:v:52:y:2021:i:2:p:790-807

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0017-4815

Access Statistics for this article

Growth and Change is currently edited by Dan Rickman and Barney Warf

More articles in Growth and Change from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().