Ben Spigel

The relational organization of entrepreneurial ecosystems

Entrepreneurial ecosystems have emerged as a popular concept to explain the persistence of high‐growth entrepreneurship within regions. However, as a theoretical concept ecosystems remain underdeveloped, making it difficult to understand their structure and influence on the entrepreneurship process. The article argues that ecosystems are composed of 10 cultural, social, and material attributes that provide benefits and resources to entrepreneurs and that the relationships between these attributes reproduce the ecosystem. This model is illustrated with case studies of Waterloo, Ontario, and Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The cases demonstrate the variety of different configurations that ecosystems can take.

Bourdieuian approaches to the geography of entrepreneurial cultures

Culture has emerged as an important concept within the entrepreneurship literature to help explain differences in the nature of the entrepreneurship process observed between regions, industries and socio-cultural groups. Despite voluminous research on the topic, theories about how culture affects the entrepreneurship process remain underdeveloped. Without a framework to connect culture with everyday entrepreneurial practices and strategies, it is difficult to critically compare the role of culture between multiple contexts. Such a framework is necessary when examining the influence of local cultures on entrepreneurship, given the diverse ways they can influence economic activities. This paper introduces a Bourdieuian perspective on entrepreneurial culture that can be used to explain how particular entrepreneurial cultures emerge within regions, influence the local entrepreneurship process and evolve in the face of internal and external developments. Building on existing work on Bourdieu and entrepreneurship, this paper argues that entrepreneurship research must carefully consider how the concept of culture is used if it is to be a useful factor in explaining the heterogeneous geography of entrepreneurship we observe in the modern economy.

Economic Geography and the Financial Crisis: Full Steam Ahead?

This article considers whether the growing theoretical and methodological diversity or pluralistic nature of economic geography contributes to its lack of engagement outside the discipline and academy. Although we are enthusiastic about the vibrancy this pluralism brings, we also speculate that it contributes to the disciplines tendency to fall short of significantly impacting key debates in the social sciences. In particular, we consider the disciplinary challenges to influencing mainstream debates over financialization and the recent financial crisis and the recurring lament that economic geography “misses the boat” by failing to significantly impact key scholarly and policy issues. Specifically, we suggest that methodological and theoretical diversity, local contextualization, and relational analysis, all of which we support as vital to the discipline, make it difficult to isolate a disciplinary core. We conclude that pluralism produces a vibrant discipline with unique explanatory power but that it also has important impacts on the design, execution, and influence of geographers’ research outside the discipline.

A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS: THE GROWTH, DECLINE, AND REBIRTH OF OTTAWA’S ENTREPRENEURIAL INSTITUTIONS

Purpose – This chapter examines how informal and formal entrepreneurial institutions are influenced by economic crises. These institutions act as the foundation for many, if not all, entrepreneurial activities, but they are highly vulnerable to change during times of crisis. Design/methodology/approach – This chapter uses a case study of software entrepreneurs in Ottawa, Canada, to better understand the influence of the 2001 and 2008 recessions on the social and economic aspects of entrepreneurship. This case is examined through a set of 39 semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs, investors, and economic development officers. Findings – While informal entrepreneurial institutions have adapted to a changing economic environment, formal institutions and government programs have so far failed to do this. This results in less effective entrepreneurship support programs. Research limitations/implications – As with other qualitative case studies, these findings are not generalizable to other regions. This chapter calls for further research is needed to better understand the social forces behind institutional change. Practical implications – This chapter argues that entrepreneurship support programs must be customized to the informal social institutions that underlie all entrepreneurial behavior and practices. This alignment potentially increases the usefulness of such programs to entrepreneurs. Originality/value of the paper– While entrepreneurship in Ottawa has been carefully studied, there has been very little work examining how technology entrepreneurship in Ottawa has fared after the decline of the telecommunications market. This chapter is useful to both entrepreneurship scholars as well as practitioners and policy makers interested in how entrepreneurial institutions react to crises.

University spin-offs, entrepreneurial environment and start-up policy: the cases of Waterloo and Toronto (Ontario) and Columbus (Ohio)

Universities can be central to a regions economic growth and development, especially if they support start-up, spin-off and modernisation processes related to the regional core sectors. While many governments and associations have developed programmes to encourage the establishment of university spin-offs, the policies they craft are hampered by two major problems. The first is a narrow understanding of spin-offs that focuses on firms directly based on university research. This approach misses firms that use university-related knowledge and resources, unsponsored through the university. Second, spin-off promotion policies often ignore the role of a larger regional entrepreneurial culture and supporting institutions. This paper argues that a broader view of spin-offs is required; a view that accounts for a larger array of ventures and that looks beyond the firm or university to the broader set of regional structures and relations. The empirical evidence presented draws from start-up and spin-off experiences at universities in the USA and Canada.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

We follow Schumpeter in attributing to entrepreneurs the spark to bring new combinations to market by combining knowledge, perceived opportunity, and other resources to form new firms. A link between innovation and entrepreneurship was first seen in new firms exploiting new technologies in high-technology regions. This context set the tone for research, which we explore in this chapter. We identify four topics: entrepreneurship in high-tech contexts, spinoffs from university research, the local/regional ecosystem or innovation system, and flows of knowledge within social and professional networks. Underlying these four attributes of high-tech innovation are cultural outlooks and orientations. Without an understanding of how culture influences entrepreneurial and innovative activities, it is difficult to study their relationship with the cultural contexts in which they take place. Building on a nexus-based view of innovation and entrepreneurship, we argue that culture is best understood as a process through which actors interpret the world around them and which can either encourage or discourage entrepreneurial and innovative activity.

The sources of regional variation in Canadian self-employment

The regional variation of entrepreneurship and self-employment within and across nations has been carefully studied over the past 20 years. A multitude of papers covering more than a dozen countries have examined what economic and social factors drive local entrepreneurship. This paper both adds to this literature by examining the sources of regional variation of self-employment in Canada as well as critiques it by discussing the challenge of applying findings from one country to others. Through a meta-analysis of 34 previous studies of regional entrepreneurial variation, several common factors are identified and then examined in a Canadian context. Using data from the 2006 Census of Canada, the paper uses OLS regression to test the role of economic, demographic, and social factors on non-agricultural self-employment in Canadian census metropolitan areas. Population growth, migration, unemployment, firm size and structure all play a significant role in rates of self-employment in Canada.

Path dependency, entrepreneurship, and economic resilience in resource-driven economies: Lessons from the Newfoundland Offshore Oil Industry, Canada

Resource-driven regional economies have experienced significant growth over the past decade due to increasing prices of raw materials such as oil and the need for customized and site-specific technologies to increase production and reduce risk. As a result, significant amounts of human and financial capital have built up in these regions. However, there are few examples of resource-dependent economies using these regional assets to successfully diversify away from their dependence on extractive industries, leading to profound declines as resource prices decline globally as they did in 2015. This paper examines the evolutionary lock-in and lock-out processes of resource economies and the potential of technology entrepreneurship to initiate path creation in these regions. Based on interviews with entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers in St. John’s, Newfoundland, we explore the processes through which firms both inside and outside the resource industry are locked-in to existing economic trajectories and the ability of technology entrepreneurs to break out of these limitations and diversify into new industries and markets. We find that the relationships between the region’s culture, its investment environment, and global changes in the oil and gas industry combine to create and reproduce industrial lock-in within the region. If long-term regional diversification and path creation appears to be the exception rather than the rule for resource-driven economies, entrepreneurs stand out as the central drivers of change shaping the path-enabling potential generated through resource booms.