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To understand how narratives used by entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) in Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem shape transitional entrepreneurs' social reality. We offer theoretical and practical insights to elicit critical support, formulate policies and programs and guide ongoing empirical examination of transitional entrepreneurship.

We adopt a multi-case study approach, looking at two ESOs in Detroit: one focused on promoting high-growth entrepreneurship and securing financial capital for technology entrepreneurs, the other focused on promoting everyday entrepreneurship (especially among underserved communities) and amassing a more diverse array of resources. We conduct a thematic analysis of organizational texts and interview data with ESO leaders.

ESO narratives shape Detroit's transitional entrepreneurs by constructing entrepreneurs' social identity, orienting them to the ecosystem and envisioning a collective future in which transitional entrepreneurs are key.

This study offers insight into the definition of transitional entrepreneurs by extending existing conceptions by highlighting the role of institutional actors, like ESOs, and the narratives they adopt in shaping opportunities and challenges for transitional entrepreneurs. Moreover, we push the boundaries of transitional entrepreneurship, including technology start-up entrepreneurs in the definition and call attention to the role of transitional entrepreneurs in post-industrial cities by showcasing their role in community and urban development.

Sport entrepreneurial ecosystems are part of the international business environment and help to determine the competitiveness of a place. While the origins of entrepreneurial ecosystems derive from the economic geography field, increasingly international business theories are being used as a way to engage with the cultural and societal context. This means it is important for scholars to take an interdisciplinary perspective on how to define and conceptualize an ecosystem from an entrepreneurial point of view. This chapter reviews the current body of literature on sport entrepreneurial ecosystems and extends it to a more international business perspective by focusing on knowledge spillovers. This will enable sport managers and practitioners to utilize entrepreneurial ecosystems as a way to foster their internationalization efforts.

Entrepreneurial ecosystems have quickly become one of the most popular topics in entrepreneurship research. Ecosystems are the characteristics and factors of a place that support high-growth entrepreneurship. This provides the ability for the field to provide important policy insights about how to aid the development of high growth, innovative ventures, as well as generate new insights into the relationship between the entrepreneurship phenomenon and the contexts it takes place within. However, work in the field remains undertheorized, with a little understanding of how the entrepreneur benefits from being in a strong ecosystem. This chapter argues that it is helpful to return to Ed Malecki’s work in a previous volume of this series, which explored the importance of networks. His work has contributed to a very broad stream of work on entrepreneurial environment. Using this as a starting point, this chapter distinguishes between “top-down” approaches to study ecosystems, which focus on the actors and factors that make up an ecosystem, and a “bottom-up” approach, which instead examines the ways in which entrepreneurs use their ecosystem to get the resources, knowledge, and support they need. The chapter concludes by suggesting how a research agenda for a bottom-up study of ecosystems can be informed by Malecki’s work.

The time is right for a theory on strategic entrepreneurial ecosystems and business model innovation. Both topics have increased substantially during the past couple of years due to their strategic nature. This means they are uniquely placed to provide practical advice but also theoretical development. This chapter discusses the theory in terms of how it bridges strategic planning, innovation management, and entrepreneurship literature. Thereby propelling the field of entrepreneurial ecosystems further by suggesting it has both a strategic and business model perspective. This chapter argues the reasons for a new theory to be developed in order to maintain the relevance and practicality of the entrepreneurial ecosystem literature.

Entrepreneurial ecosystems have become policy strategies to stimulate entrepreneurial activities, yet the current understanding underlying value creation and the factors influencing this value-capturing mechanism remains limited. In this chapter, we systematically review literature related to the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and we seek to provide a greater understanding of the value creation process within an ecosystem. The findings from our content analysis shed light on the multifaceted structures and drivers of the value creation process. The study contributes to studies and theory development in the field of entrepreneurial ecosystem literature and further advances potential future research.

In this chapter, the author explore the role of entrepreneurial ecosystems in terms of focusing on the importance of accelerators. Entrepreneurship is crucial for the ongoing success of accelerators but seldom has research focused on the ecosystem perspective. Organizations habitually use their contacts and networks to facilitate business growth through being included in accelerator programs. This means that comprehending how different entities are embedded in an entrepreneurial ecosystem can provide learning benefits. In the ecosystem literature, the role of accelerators has mainly been studied from the individual and firm-level demonstrating the relationship between entrepreneurial behavior and firm performance but there is more need to emphasis the role accelerators play in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Suggestions for managers involved in entrepreneurial ecosystems are suggested in this chapter as a way of encouraging more involvement in accelerator programs.

Entrepreneurs are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence (AI) to assist in creating and scaling new ventures. Research on entrepreneurs’ use of AI algorithms (machine learning, natural language processing, artificial neural networks) has focused on the intra-organizational implications of AI. The purpose of this paper is to explore how entrepreneurs’ adoption of AI influences their inter- and meta-organizational relationships.

To address the limited understanding of the consequences of AI for communities of entrepreneurs, this paper develops a theory to explain how AI algorithms influence the micro (entrepreneur) and macro (system) dynamics of entrepreneurial ecosystems.

The theory’s main insight is that substituting AI for entrepreneurial ecosystem interactions influences not only entrepreneurs’ pursuit of opportunities but also the coordination of their local entrepreneurial ecosystems.

The theory contributes by drawing attention to the inter-organizational implications of AI, explaining how the decision to substitute AI for human interactions is a micro-foundation of ecosystems, and motivating a research agenda at the intersection of AI and entrepreneurial ecosystems.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate challenges of building entrepreneurial ecosystems in peripheral places. The entrepreneurial ecosystem concept is developing a rising popularity among both academics and policymakers in recent years where much of the attention has been put in major urban cities. However, on the way to achieve balanced growth and equity, peripheral places should not be neglected. Thus, this paper links literature on ecosystem with peripheral region studies in creating a conceptual framework of developing entrepreneurial ecosystems in peripheral places.

The paper first reviews literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems and challenges that peripheral places facing in particular. Then, taking into consideration of literature from both fields, a conceptual framework is developed. In order to better illustrate the framework, a case study on Guildford’s digital gaming industry is reviewed based on secondary data.

Though facing various challenges such as smallness, remoteness and lack of resources, peripheral places can take advantage of the digital technology and build an entrepreneurial ecosystem of its own kind through holistic collaborative approach to tackle issues around finance, talents, socio-culture environment, infrastructure, markets and policy.

The paper is among the first to focus on developing a holistic conceptual framework in building entrepreneurial ecosystems in peripheral areas. It can lead to a range of further research topics and contribute to develop viable practices particularly for policymakers.

Entrepreneurial ecosystem is a frontier issue in the field of enterprise strategy and entrepreneurship. As suggested by bottom of the pyramid (BOP) theory, entrepreneurs from base of the pyramid can gain the benefits of economic growth by obtaining equal entrepreneurial opportunities with appropriate support and motivation. However, theoretical framework to understand the ecosystem and help the people from the BOP to benefit from ecosystem is under-researched. Based on the investigation of the Taobao ecosystem case study, this paper developed a multi-layer framework to fill in the research gap.

This research adopts case study methodology for several reasons. First, case study methodology fits the explorative nature of this research to understand “what” and “how” a phenomenon happened (Yin, 2017). Second, case study research design can specify gaps or holes in existing theory with the ultimate goal of advancing theoretical explanations (Ridder, 2016). And third, it can provide researchers with contextual richness (Davison and Martinsons, 2016; Spigel, 2017).

Based on the literature review of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and the theory of the BOP, the initial framework of the inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem is proposed. And then, based on the investigation of the Taobao village which is the typical inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem, this paper explored how the inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem emerges, develops and realises the co-creation between multiple actors. The emergence of Taobao village entrepreneurial ecosystem is because of the fact that ICT empowers BOP entrepreneurs. The development of entrepreneurial ecosystem presents a point-line-plane diffusion path, and co-creation to enhance inclusive entrepreneurship is realised by interaction and cooperation within social networks and integration of resources. Then, the framework of inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem is further modified.

The complexity of entrepreneurial ecosystem facing BOP poses a major challenge to its actual operation. Therefore, it is necessary to study the driving factors of inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems. In particular, ecosystem is a purposeful collaborative network of dynamic interactive systems, which has a set of changing dependencies in a given context. Research is still limited on socioeconomic actors’ interaction with each other in each stage to promote the evolution of entrepreneurial ecosystem. The extent to which they are intentionally designed or organically produced is still unclear, which is recommended for future study in this field.

It provides theoretical understanding on how to successfully form sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem by integrating BOP entrepreneurs in value chain. The successful experience of Taobao village can provide contributions and implications for the management in practice. On the one hand, this can provide theoretical guidance for other countries and regions to build inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystems and help them to check and fill the gaps and build inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystems based on their local characteristics. On the other hand, this study provides theoretical guidance for solving the problem of poverty at the BOP, transforming the poor from the objects of help to successful entrepreneurs and thus realising regional sustainable development.

The significance of this study is to provide theoretical understanding on how to successfully form entrepreneurial ecosystem by practical investigation of entrepreneurial “habitat” at the BOP.

Despite the significance, university student start-ups and student entrepreneurship ecosystems (SEEs) have been subject to little research. This study aims to apply a qualitative emergent enquiry approach to explore best practice SEEs in Australia, complimented by narratives from leading scholars in higher education institutions with the aim of delineating the integrative components of SEEs.

Adopting the entrepreneurial ecosystem framework and aligned to the social cognitive theory, this paper explores the components and dynamics of SEEs, contributing to an understanding of how such components can better support the growth, sustainability and success of student start-ups. The authors extend entrepreneurship research on social construction using narrative research.

The findings provide guidelines for researchers, entrepreneurship scholars and educators, entrepreneurship students, policymakers and practitioners to enhance the impact and success of university student start-ups by adopting a student ecosystem approach.

The narratives represent a limited number of universities with an opportunity for further research to empirically measure the impact and outcomes of SEEs. The research is exploratory, inherently conceptual and emergent, providing an opportunity for validation of narrative frameworks in future studies.

The findings may assist university managers to be more aware of their own subconscious preferences to student entrepreneurship and start-up initiatives, which may be useful in refining their impact and offerings regarding a quest toward the entrepreneurial university.

From social perspectives, the alignment of the components of SEE has the ability to enhance and shift the entrepreneurial mindset of entrepreneurship students, notwithstanding enhancement of intentionality and self-efficacy.

This is the first study of SEEs in Australia, highlighting the importance of the integration of entrepreneurship education programs, entrepreneurship education ecosystems, the entrepreneurial university and specific start-up initiatives such as university accelerators. Furthermore, students may enhance their entrepreneurial mindset by actively engaging in such ecosystems.