Small Business Economics最新文献

To stimulate entrepreneurship, many universities have established academic makerspaces. So far, we know little about this phenomenon. Specifically, we lack insights into the entrepreneurial motivations of academic makers and the types of opportunities they find appealing. Drawing on a conjoint experiment and a survey of 144 academic makers, we analyze their entrepreneurial motivations and identify key criteria that make entrepreneurial opportunities attractive for them. Our findings indicate that academic makers are primarily motivated by the desire for learning, innovation, autonomy, and problem-solving. Market potential and social impact are key criteria in making an entrepreneurial opportunity attractive. The specific criteria vary among different characteristics of the makers. Makers with entrepreneurial experience put a higher value on market potential and avoid opportunities associated with technically challenging projects. In contrast, highly experienced makers prefer working independently and are often skeptical about opportunities associated with strong intellectual property rights protection. These findings have important implications for understanding academic makers as catalysts for university-based entrepreneurship and innovation, offering valuable insights for universities seeking to promote entrepreneurship through makerspaces.

Attention is now increasingly being drawn to the interconnectedness of different entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs). Consequently, from a theoretical viewpoint EEs are increasingly being viewed from a multi-scaler rather than a mono-scaler perspective. This paper examines the spatial financial interlinkages between places and different forms and stages of entrepreneurial finance. Using a unique real-time data source of equity investments from Crunchbase, we investigate the composition of entrepreneurial finance across 30 different UK spatial locations. The core focus of the work is to uncover the composition of equity deals in terms of non-indigenous international investors and how space plays a role in influencing the prevalence of these extra-local investment deals. A novel dimension of the study is to test the “distance effects” encountered by locations in terms of their spatial proximity to the UK’s major international hub for entrepreneurial finance: London. We found that the probability of attracting international investors varies significantly across different funding stages with late-stage ventures showing a much higher propensity to attract international investors. By unpacking the “money-distance nexus” a core finding is that proximity to London is crucial for receiving external funding from international investors. Policy implications for less advantageous EEs focus on strategies for leveraging extra-local investment.

National venture capitalist (VC) ecosystems are not isolated from each other, and foreign VC species may cross borders when pursuing valuable investment opportunities. The present research demonstrates that VC investments inside or outside VCs’ domestic ecosystems play a significant role in the target ventures’ valuation. VCs trade off familiarity of their domestic ecosystem for valuation. Our results indicate that familiarity with the domestic ecosystem reduces risk, and purely domestic deals consequently carry significantly positive valuation premia. Cross-border deals, on the other hand, have a significantly negative impact on valuation. However, certain comparative ecosystem characteristics, such as institutional shareholder protections and an ecosystem’s comparative competitive advantage, as well as an ecosystem’s relative saturation in terms of money on the market, partially offset the observed cross-border valuation penalty.

Entrepreneurial ecosystem measures should combine archival civic and self-reported entrepreneur data. This combination helps to overcome the limitations of aggregated archival data that affect our collective capacity to derive actionable insights for research and policy. Previous measurement approaches lack consistency with entrepreneurial ecosystem theory because they do not capture data at a sufficiently local level or data about entrepreneurs’ values, beliefs, and attitudes. This paper proposes a new measurement approach for EE elements at the district level (NUTS-3), facilitating comparisons of local geographic EE properties and measuring relations between entrepreneurs, new ventures, and their ecosystems. Using confirmatory factor analysis, we combine self-reported and archival data to connect the micro and macro dimensions of the entrepreneurial ecosystem phenomenon. Analyzing survey data from 257 founders of innovative startups across 29 NUTS-3 districts in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, our findings support the “substitutability logic” among ten entrepreneurial ecosystem elements and uncover district-level geographic properties. Our study offers replication possibilities, recommendations for entrepreneurs’ actions, and policy monitoring.

Entrepreneurial support organizations can play an important role in nascent entrepreneurial ecosystems by enabling productive and sustainable entrepreneurship. However, in such ecosystems, entrepreneurial support organizations may struggle to access the resources they need to activate their support. Drawing upon inductive qualitative research with 31 entrepreneurial support organizations and 40 interviews in Uganda, we examine how entrepreneurial support organizations navigate challenges of resource-constraints in nascent entrepreneurial ecosystems. A conceptual model is developed, depicting (1) key challenges entrepreneurial support organizations face in resource-constrained nascent entrepreneurial ecosystems, (2) the practices they enact to navigate such challenges, and (3) the implications of these practices at the meso-level of the “entrepreneurial support ecosystem.” We find that some entrepreneurial support organizations use adaptation practices to navigate challenges in nascent entrepreneurial ecosystems, while others deploy more agentic collaboration and transformation practices. We describe the latter as “ecosystem work” defined as efforts to create, maintain, and disrupt entrepreneurial support ecosystems. Finally, our model depicts how different navigating practices may influence entrepreneurial support dynamics. We suggest that while adaptation alone may result in stagnating entrepreneurial support ecosystems, “ecosystem work” may engender flourishing entrepreneurial support ecosystems.

We adopt a pluralistic view of productive entrepreneurship to examine how various elements of entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) affect both performance-based (high-growth entrepreneurship) and non-performance-based (proprietorship rate and new venture creation) outcomes. Our theoretical framework is guided by the recently developed three-step configurational approach, and our analysis employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) on a comprehensive sample of U.S. regional EEs. We identified five types of EEs—Bottom-Up Ecosystem, Top-Down Ecosystem, Free Enterprise Foundation, Collectivistic VC-backed Ecosystem, and Individualistic VC-backed Ecosystem—highlighting diverse ways in which local resource endowments (e.g., talent and finance) and institutional arrangements (e.g., formal institutions and culture) combine to foster different entrepreneurial outcomes. This study broadens the applicability of the EE configurational approach, moving beyond the “Silicon Valley” model to embrace a more inclusive “Main Street” perspective, addressing the call for a more nuanced understanding of entrepreneurship determinants and outcomes across different contexts.

This paper explores the geography of entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) and provides a typology of how EEs are connected trans-locally. Although the literature has mainly focused on the place-specificities of EEs, there is limited research on the trans-local connections established by entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) that foster exogenous dynamics. Exploiting a longitudinal dataset of European startups participating in accelerator programs embedded within EEs, this study disentangles patterns of temporary relocation and maps the centrality of EEs through both network and cluster analysis. Our results support the notion of startups being locally embedded but also emphasize the flow of knowledge and resource exchange across different EEs. Eventually, the spatial network of temporary relocations highlights a mix of EE profiles, indicating that trans-local exchange through accelerator participation is the norm rather than the exception within EEs. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of EEs and the role of accelerators in facilitating and shaping trans-local entrepreneurial activities.

Both urban and rural firm entry rates have declined over the last three decades, and the urban–rural gap in firm entry rates has increased. We investigate which local market factors are associated with the divergence between 1993 and 2019. Our model includes local measures of firm agglomeration, population agglomeration, human capital, consumption demand, government fiscal policies, and natural amenities. Their effects on firm entry are consistent over time and have similar signs in both rural and urban markets. While the magnitudes of these factors have remained fairly stable over time, their impact on firm entry has diminished in both markets, which has lowered the rate of firm entry overall. Larger rural market declines in the importance of firm agglomeration, population agglomeration, and educated labor supply are the main factors driving the rising gap in urban–rural firm entry.

The entrepreneurial ecosystem concept has gained significant traction in both academic and policy discussions. However, the internal mechanisms and interrelations within and between entrepreneurial ecosystems are not fully understood: entrepreneurial ecosystem black boxes need to be opened. To advance the field, this special issue identifies key research themes essential to developing a rigorous and transdisciplinary entrepreneurial ecosystem research program. The first theme explores the configurations of entrepreneurial ecosystem elements, focusing on their structure, composition, and impact on different types of entrepreneurship. The second theme examines social interactions within and across entrepreneurial ecosystems, analyzing network characteristics, relationships, and temporal dynamics. The third theme investigates ecosystem outcomes, assessing entrepreneurial outputs and their contributions to aggregate welfare and sustainable development. The fourth theme delves into entrepreneurial ecosystem evolution, including mechanisms like entrepreneurial recycling and the feedback loops that drive ecosystem transformation. The fifth theme addresses entrepreneurial ecosystem boundaries, emphasizing the need for clear delimitation while recognizing inter-ecosystem connectivity. Finally, the sixth theme highlights the measurement of entrepreneurial ecosystems, advocating for standardized metrics to ensure comparability and the accumulation of knowledge. The special issue includes six original studies that contribute to opening these entrepreneurial ecosystem black boxes, employing diverse methodologies and addressing significant gaps in entrepreneurial ecosystem research. By fostering cumulative scholarship, this collection aims to enhance understanding and inform evidence-based policy and practice in entrepreneurial ecosystem development.

The quality of entrepreneurial ecosystems not only enables local startups, but also affects the attraction and supply of non-local founders. We conceptualize entrepreneurial ecosystems as open systems with inflows and outflows of entrepreneurial talent. Beyond individual agency, these talent flows are driven by the quality of the origin and destination entrepreneurial ecosystems. We use network analysis and gravity models to study the interregional flows of founders of non-local startups within Italy and find empirical evidence for the creation, attraction, and supply mechanisms of entrepreneurial ecosystems. Entrepreneurial ecosystems not only provide a supportive environment for the creation of local startups, but also attract non-local founders. In addition, we reveal an escalator mechanism: (prospective) entrepreneurs tend to move from good to better entrepreneurial ecosystems.