Abstract
With innovation and entrepreneurship lauded as important contributors to economic futures, there is a pressing need to unravel the complexities of entrepreneurial ecosystems as a context for cultivating new businesses initiatives. This chapter reports on the deconstruction and analysis of the entrepreneurial ecosystem concept, through a hermeneutic reflection catalysed by a symposium of international scholars. We apply the theoretical fields of business networks and systems theory within our reflective method. This reflective comparison reveals parallels and divergences as well as consistencies and contrasts between these two fields and the concept of entrepreneurial ecosystems. The analysis revealed that the concepts of place and dynamics are specific to entrepreneurial ecosystems and so provide a path for guiding research and policy investigations.
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Acknowledgements
(1) We wish to acknowledge and thank the participants of the Entrepreneurial Ecosystems Symposium, held at The University of Adelaide on the 14th and 15th June, 2016 for sharing their knowledge, wisdom and insight that inspired this research and grounded our group reflective enquiry to distil our findings. (2) An earlier version of this chapter has been published in the proceedings for the 30th Australia and New Zealand Academy of Management conference, 2017.
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Daniel, L., Medlin, C.J., O’Connor, A., Statsenko, L., Vnuk, R., Hancock, G. (2018). Deconstructing the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Concept. In: O'Connor, A., Stam, E., Sussan, F., Audretsch, D. (eds) Entrepreneurial Ecosystems. International Studies in Entrepreneurship, vol 38. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63531-6_2
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