Regional entrepreneurial ecosystems: learning from forest ecosystems

Allan O’Connor () and David Audretsch ()
Additional contact information
Allan O’Connor: University of South Australia
David Audretsch: University of South Australia

Small Business Economics, 2023, vol. 60, issue 3, No 10, 1079 pages

Abstract: Abstract Despite the emerging body of literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs), theoretical development is still in its infancy. In this article, we explicitly draw upon the analogy of forest ecosystems (FEs) with an EE to extrapolate the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem (REE) as an alternate conceptual framework. The REE considers a region’s socioeconomic activity and the stability of its performance as a whole, influenced by partitioned interests of economics, social arrangements, physical environment, knowledge and the technology that each contributes to the community’s industry and economic order. We contend that it is when an EE is defined by a regional dimension that it is analogous to the study of forests. In this REE analysis, neither the entrepreneur nor their firm are the unit of analysis, but it is the change and stability of the regional socioeconomic ecosystem itself that becomes the priority. Scholars, interested in the effects of entrepreneurship, can learn from ecological studies to more fully grasp the interplay between compositional, structural, and functional elements and specifically how entrepreneurs account for change dynamics.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial ecosystem; Regional entrepreneurial ecosystem; Theory building; Socioeconomic; Realist ontology; Analogy; Metaphor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L16 L21 L26 M13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11187-022-00623-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:sbusec:v:60:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s11187-022-00623-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/11187/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-022-00623-8

Access Statistics for this article

Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch

More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().