Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (PDF)

The term entrepreneurial ecosystems has gained increasing notoriety among scholars and practitioners, particularly due to the mainstream business books such as Brad Feld's (2012) Startup communities: Building an entrepreneurial ecosystem in your city and Daniel Isenberg's (2010) Harvard Business Review article What an entrepreneurship ecosystem actually is. Together with many other writings, these works have popularized the phrase "e;entrepreneurial ecosystem."e; Yet a problem remains, there is neither a universally accepted definition of the "e;entrepreneurial ecosystem,"e; nor a theory explaining this phenomenon. This special issue invited scholarly contributions to examine various facets of the entrepreneurial ecosystem to help coalesce our understanding of what exactly it constitutes, and how it affects entrepreneurship. This special issue presents eight peer reviewed papers aimed at further contributing to our collective understanding of entrepreneurial ecosystems. These papers are diverse and interdisciplinary. The authors contributing to this issue span global boundaries (e.g., U.S., U.K., Australia, France, Finland, Malaysia). These authors also cross disciplinary boundaries and study contexts (e.g., entrepreneurship, sustainability, geography, public and international affairs, management, engineering).