Entrepreneurial Ecosystems and Regional Policy: A Sympathetic Critique

Erik Stam

European Planning Studies, 2015, vol. 23, issue 9, 1759-1769

Abstract: Regional policies for entrepreneurship are currently going through a transition from increasing the quantity of entrepreneurship to increasing the quality of entrepreneurship. The next step will be the transition from entrepreneurship policy towards policy for an entrepreneurial economy. The entrepreneurial ecosystem approach has been heralded as a new framework accommodating these transitions. This approach starts with the entrepreneurial actor, but emphasizes the context of productive entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is not only the output of the system, entrepreneurs are important players themselves in creating the ecosystem and keeping it healthy. This research briefing reviews the entrepreneurial ecosystem literature and its shortcomings, and provides a novel synthesis. The entrepreneurial ecosystem approach speaks directly to practitioners, but its causal depth and evidence base is rather limited. This article provides a novel synthesis including a causal scheme of how the framework and systemic conditions of the ecosystem lead to particular entrepreneurial activities as output of the ecosystem and new value creation as outcome of the ecosystem. In addition it provides a framework for analysing the interactions between the elements within the ecosystem. This offers a much more rigorous and relevant starting point for subsequent studies into entrepreneurial ecosystems and the regional policy implications of these.

Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (448)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09654313.2015.1061484 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Entrepreneurial Ecosystems and Regional Policy: A Sympathetic Critique (2015)
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:taf:eurpls:v:23:y:2015:i:9:p:1759-1769

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CEPS20

DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2015.1061484

Access Statistics for this article

European Planning Studies is currently edited by Philip Cooke and Louis Albrechts

More articles in European Planning Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().