Components of sustainability of entrepreneurial ecosystems in knowledge-intensive enterprises: the application of fuzzy analytic hierarchy process

ABSTRACT The study sheds lights on the components of the sustainability of an entrepreneurial ecosystem in knowledge-intensive enterprises using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in fuzzy environment. The research sample was composed of 20 experts of entrepreneurship who were selected by criterion and snowball sampling techniques. The criteria included political, cultural, social capital, human resource, market, financial, and support dimensions. It was found that the political, cultural, and social capital criteria scored the highest weighted importance of 0.536, 0.423, and 0.361, respectively. As a result, they were the most important factors in accounting for the sustainability of an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Furthermore, the consistency test showed that the inconsistency ratio was smaller than 0.01 for all studied factors, leading to the conclusion that each individual ecosystem integrates the factors existing in each region in its own specific way. In fact, no single dimension can be removed from entrepreneurial ecosystems.