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The purpose of this paper is to examine how entrepreneurship culture affects start-up and venture capital co-evolution during the early evolution of an entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) and its ability to foster the emergence of ambitious entrepreneurship as an outcome of its activity. Unlike studies that capture entrepreneurship culture at the national level, this study focusses specifically on the culture of venture capital-financed entrepreneurship and understanding its implications to the development of venture capital markets and successful firm-level outcomes within ecosystems.

Relying on EE and organisational imprinting theory, this study specifies characteristics of venture capital-financed entrepreneurship of Silicon Valley to illustrate the American way of building start-ups and examine whether they have as imprints affected to the entrepreneurship culture and start-up and venture capital co-evolution in Finland during the early evolution of its EE between 1980 and 1997.

The results illustrate venture capital-financed entrepreneurship culture as a specific example of entrepreneurship culture beneath the national level that can vary across geographies like the findings concerning Finland demonstrate. The findings show that this specific culture matters through having an impact on the structural evolution and performance of EEs and on the ways how they deliver or fail to deliver benefits to entrepreneurs.

The results show that venture capital-financed entrepreneurship and the emergence of success stories as outcomes of start-up and venture capital co-evolution within an EE are connected to a specific type of entrepreneurship culture. This paper also contributes to the literature by connecting the fundamentals of organisational imprinting to EE research.

Acting entrepreneurially in nascent industries is a complex endeavor characterized by uncertainty and ambiguity. Nevertheless, entirely new industries do emerge, often as a direct result of entrepreneurial behavior. We extend and apply discovery and creation approaches to study entrepreneurial behavior during industry emergence by means of qualitative analysis of a film about the personal computer (PC) industry℉s formative years. We find that discovery and creation behavior are fundamentally interrelated and share a common element: bricolage. Moreover, ideological activism is a major component of entrepreneurial behavior in a new industry℉s formative years during both creation and discovery processes. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

The paper aims to explore the nature of initiatives and strategies of inter-organizational cooperation to cross the valley of death in the biopharma industry.

The authors conducted an exploratory case study analysis in the Biopharma Innovation Ecosystem in Greater Boston Area (USA), which is one of the oldest, and most successful IE in the US, specialized in the Biopharma domain, by conducting a round of expert interviews with key informants in the area, chosen as representatives of the different types of actors engaged in the drug development processes at different stages.

Main findings suggest that cooperation can contribute to surviving the valley of death by reducing the barriers within the drug development pipeline through the promotion of strategic relationships among actors of different nature, including the establishment of government-led thematic associations or consortia, agreements between university and business support structures, proximity to venture capitalist and the promotion of a general culture of academic entrepreneurship within universities.

The authors believe that this paper contributes to the literature by shedding light on the nature of the specific cooperative initiative the barriers in drug development and help to survive the valley of the death.