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This chapter uses an intellectual capital (IC) qualitative approach for assessing the bio health technologies entrepreneurial ecosystem of a university located in Southern Europe, aiming to identify the role played by IC in fostering the sustainable success of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. There has been limited research dedicated to deepening the knowledge of the entrepreneurial ecosystems’ dimensions, using an IC lens, in the context of university cities with different dimensions. Small cities may not have some dimensions, so developed, comparing with the ones of the ecosystems of large urban centers. This chapter uses a qualitative approach funded in a case study exploring internal and external stakeholders of a Portuguese entrepreneurial ecosystem, UBImedical, targeted at the bio health sector. The study is part of an exploratory study funded in the scope of a European Project, aiming to explore in a pioneering way the application of the dominant triad of capitals forming IC and, thus, identifying and understanding the dimensions of different entrepreneurial ecosystems. The case study reveals that the IC’s dimensions more critical for the success of the bio health entrepreneurial ecosystems are the structural capital and the relational capital, although human capital is perceived as a basic prerequisite for fostering the entrepreneurial ecosystem’s performance. The results are funded in primary and qualitative data collected from the interviews developed to previously identified external and internal stakeholders of this type of entrepreneurial ecosystem under study.

Studies have suggested that entrepreneurship is a key mechanism for rejuvenating and facilitating economic growth in deprived areas. To provide further understanding of the persistently low entrepreneurial intentions found in deprived areas this chapter identifies key mechanisms and theoretical frameworks that link the formation of appropriate human capital to the prevailing environment, and that influences may flow in both directions. This contributes to the existing literature to provide a fuller understanding of interest to policy-makers of why past interventions have struggled to boost entrepreneurial intentions and where new interventions may be most effective in generating more positive entrepreneurial intentions in deprived areas.

The growing uses of digital technologies have been creating several new business opportunities. Recently, a new concept has emerged in the literature, the “digital entrepreneurship ecosystem” (DEE). However, it has been empirically understudied. Thus, this study aims to analyze the influence of DEE on entrepreneurial activity. The meta-organization theory was used as a perspective of analysis. A quantitative methodology was applied in a sample that includes data from 28 European countries through the generalized method of moments. It was concluded that the DEE pillars, informal and formal institutions, market conditions, physical infrastructure, human capital and talent and networking and support positively influence entrepreneurial activity. It was also found that the variables knowledge, creation and dissemination and finance have a negative impact on entrepreneurial activity. Several theoretical and empirical contributions are also left for the various stakeholders. The present study is original, as no known studies analyze the influence of DEE on entrepreneurial activity in European countries from the perspective of meta-organization theory.

Although entrepreneurial capacity building is a keenly debated topic in migration and diaspora research, the concept of female entrepreneurial capacity and the framing of highly skilled migrant women has remained underexamined. This chapter, therefore, addresses knowledge gaps related to migrant women entrepreneurs (MWEs) by focusing on the entrepreneurial experiences of highly skilled female migrants from both developed and developing countries. Specifically, we turn the ‘disadvantage’ lens towards migrant women’s inherent entrepreneurial dimension, an issue that deserves greater research attention, linking migrant women and their entrepreneurship to the entrepreneurial host context and business environment. Building on rich qualitative data collected via six semi-structured interviews with MWEs based in Finland, we also make practical suggestions for how MWEs can best engage with their entrepreneurial ecosystem as well as suggestions to policy-makers regarding how to improve gender awareness and migrant inclusivity aspects of entrepreneurial ecosystems.

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.

This paper offers new conversations on entrepreneurial ecosystems as contested communities through a critique of extant work that relies uncritically on social capital. It offers new directions for theorizing and studying entrepreneurial ecosystems guided by a critical perspective of social capital (i.e., arriving from several intellectual traditions including political economy, intersectionality, critical race theory, and feminisms). In doing so, the paper offers insights around how continued structural and relational inequalities based on gender, race and/or immigrant status within the domain of entrepreneurship can be brought to the forefront of ecosystem frameworks. Doing so produces new approaches to the conceptualization and study of entrepreneurial ecosystems as more than sites of economic activity between and among actors, but rather it allows for consideration of how being differentially embedded in social structures matters for entrepreneurship. Differences in social structures within ecosystems reflect broader societal patterns and analyzing them can yield insights about the configuration of institutions. To understand the complexity of how different institutional configurations may lead to different forms of entrepreneurial ecosystems, it is necessary to have different conceptual starting points on social capital (informal) and exchange relationships (formal) as foundational aspects of entrepreneurial activities. Consequently, the paper provides these new analytic starting points, thus providing better explanatory and empirical power to demonstrate how and why inequalities persist in entrepreneurship.

This chapter seeks to provide an overview of the role that culture plays in the effective governance and sustainability of an entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE). In particular, the authors draw upon their own experience at “Marina de Empresas” (MdE), an EE located in Valencia (Spain). MdE is an emerging and exciting EE that provides a unique context. Within the same complex, an entrepreneurial university, an incubator and accelerator (Lanzadera), and an entrepreneurial financing company (Angels) are all co-located. Thus, in one locality, the complete cycle of entrepreneurship is covered. Through an embedded case study methodology and using semi-structured interviews carried out with multiple key stakeholder’s insights are generated into the distinctive culture that the ecosystem holds. In so doing, the impact of entrepreneurial values, entrepreneurial spaces, and entrepreneurial practices, are considered in relation to how they can influence ecosystem functioning. The aim is to provide comprehension toward the transcending value that culture emits across an entrepreneurial community. The findings are relevant to entrepreneurs, incubators, accelerators, and the policy makers.

Entrepreneurial opportunities can be created through the process of coopetition in which entities in an ecosystem collaborate and compete. Increasingly more emphasis is being placed on how to capitalize on the role sport plays in society through an entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective. This chapter focuses on how entrepreneurship in society has developed and the role sport plays based on complex adaptive systems. An explanation of the ecosystems metaphor emphasizes how the sport industry is similar to a biological system in which planned and unplanned occurrences contribute to entrepreneurship. This enables a theoretical and practical underpinning of sport startups to emerge.

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.