The road to evidence based applicable policies for regional entrepreneurial ecosystems

Abstract

PurposeEntrepreneurial Ecosystems (EES) is among the fastest growing entrepreneurship research topics. With even greater vigour, the non-scientific world of economic development agencies, administrations and policymakers has adopted the construct and applies it widely “in the field”, often lacking a solid empirical foundation and pursuing sub-optimal approaches. Improving policy instruments for EES development requires a data driven approach to first understand an EES of a specific region before making any attempts to change it. The paper showcases an empirical approach to create empirically rooted EES policy implications, contributing to closing the gap for insight in regional EES data of sub-national regions.Design/methodology/approachExploring a mixed method design, utilising quantitative Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data and combining it with EES stakeholder interviews, focusing on dysfunctions, redundancies, power asymmetries and cut off elements as well as in-layer division and public organisation behaviour.FindingsOne finding is, that regional economic development agencies (EDA), as a main public instrument to foster regional entrepreneurial activity, seem to bring the potential of a negative impact on Entrepreneurial Ecosystems bottom-up development and the ability to become self-sustained if they assume the role of competitors towards private organisations and businesses.Research limitations/implicationsAs other work on EES, the approach used in this paper only sub-optimally covers temporal system dynamics.Practical implicationsThis paper contributes to future EES support policies being rooted in an empirical foundation.Originality/valueThis paper not only progresses the empirical basis for research on regional EES but also lays the foundation for specific policy implications for a sub-national level entrepreneurial ecosystem.