Purpose

Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (EES) is among the fastest growing entrepreneurship research topics. With even greater vigour, the non-scientific world of economic development agencies, administrations and policymakers has adopted the construct and applies it widely “in the field”, often lacking a solid empirical foundation and pursuing sub-optimal approaches. Improving policy instruments for EES development requires a data driven approach to first understand an EES of a specific region before making any attempts to change it. The paper showcases an empirical approach to create empirically rooted EES policy implications, contributing to closing the gap for insight in regional EES data of sub-national regions.

Design/methodology/approach

Exploring a mixed method design, utilising quantitative Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data and combining it with EES stakeholder interviews, focusing on dysfunctions, redundancies, power asymmetries and cut off elements as well as in-layer division and public organisation behaviour.

Findings

One finding is, that regional economic development agencies (EDA), as a main public instrument to foster regional entrepreneurial activity, seem to bring the potential of a negative impact on Entrepreneurial Ecosystems bottom-up development and the ability to become self-sustained if they assume the role of competitors towards private organisations and businesses.

Research limitations/implications

As other work on EES, the approach used in this paper only sub-optimally covers temporal system dynamics.

Practical implications

This paper contributes to future EES support policies being rooted in an empirical foundation.

Originality/value

This paper not only progresses the empirical basis for research on regional EES but also lays the foundation for specific policy implications for a sub-national level entrepreneurial ecosystem.

中文翻译：

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基于证据的区域创业生态系统适用政策之路

目的

创业生态系统（EES）是发展最快的创业研究主题之一。经济发展机构，政府和政策制定者的非科学世界以更大的活力采取了这种结构，并在“实地”中广泛应用，常常缺乏扎实的经验基础，并追求次优的方法。改善EES开发的政策工具需要一种数据驱动的方法，以便在尝试进行任何更改之前首先了解特定区域的EES。本文展示了一种经验方法，以建立以经验为基础的EES政策含义，有助于缩小对次国家区域EES数据的洞察力。

设计/方法/方法

探索一种混合方法设计，利用定量的全球创业监测数据并将其与EES利益相关者访谈相结合，重点关注功能障碍，冗余，权力不对称和切断要素以及层级划分和公共组织行为。

发现

一个发现是，作为促进区域企业家活动的主要公共工具，区域经济发展机构（EDA）似乎给创业生态系统的自下而上发展带来负面影响的潜力，以及如果它们能够自我维持的能力扮演竞争对手对私人组织和企业的角色。

研究局限/意义

与EES的其他工作一样，本文中使用的方法仅次优地涵盖了时间系统动力学。

实际影响

本文为扎根于经验基础的未来EES支持政策做出了贡献。

创意/价值

本文不仅为区域EES的研究提供了经验基础，而且还为地方层面的创业生态系统的具体政策含义奠定了基础。