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Multidimensional assessment of entrepreneurial ecosystems and development of typology

Stamati Dimitra

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Summary

This dissertation studies, analyses, discusses and proposes the assessment of entrepreneurial or entrepreneurship ecosystems. Entrepreneurship and innovation are two elements that can promote economic growth globally and can impact people’s life, for example through innovative products or services. Although the term “ecosystem” was first used in the fields of ecology and biology, this term has appeared in the field of management with the entrepreneurial ecosystems. Thus, entrepreneurial ecosystems are a new and emerging research field. Entrepreneurial ecosystems can be seen as networks of various actors, factors and relations that interact with each other, as well as with the environment and can contribute not only to economic growth worldwide, but they can affect the chances of a company surviving in a specific region or country. An example of the most widely known entrepreneurial ecosystem is the Silicon Valley in the US. Entrepreneurial ecosystems can promote and facilitate not only entrepreneurship but also innovation where elements, such as access to human capital, finance and other resources, are all vital in order for the ecosystem to prosper combined with the appropriate environment where policies will enable and facilitate entrepreneurship. The question that rises is how can the assessment of entrepreneurial ecosystems be conducted? In this thesis the current assessment frameworks of entrepreneurial ecosystems are studied in depth. In addition, it is also studied how the evaluation of innovation ecosystems is conducted, since both innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems have common points. This is proven through the existing frameworks and indexes that are being used for these assessements such as for example the European Innovation Scoreboard, the Global Entrepreneurship Index, etc. Until now, in the existing literature the assessment of ecosystems is conducted based on the category of ecosystems, if they are innovation or entrepreneurial ecosystems and only at one level each time for example at the macro level which concerns countries, at the meso level which concerns regions and at the micro level which concerns companies. Therefore, there is a gap in the literature and a need for the creation of a new framework that can address this gap through a multilevel approach. The aim of this thesis is the multilevel assessment of the innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems through the development of a new proposed framework. This new proposed framework can assess these ecosystems at the macro, meso and micro level. At the national level 28 EU countries, at the regional level 212 EU regions and at the firm level 120 companies in the Cretan Agrofood industry have been assessed. The new proposed framework was implemented with Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods and more specifically with the Non-Weighted model (NWM) and the TOPSIS method.This new proposed framework is based on existing theories and studies. More specifically, the 3P framework of Carayannis and Provance (2008) is used, which measures firm innovativeness. The 3P framework is incorporated in this thesis, in order to create the domains of the new proposed framework and evaluate the immediate, mid-range and long-range results of different innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems. In addition, existing studies such as for example the studies of Isenberg (2011a) and Stam (2017) on the elements of the entrepreneurial ecosystems were also incorporated, in order to create the pillars of the framework. Moreover, the existing frameworks such as the European Innovation Scoreboard, the Global Entrepreneurship Index, etc were studied, in order to select the most appropriate variables.This new proposed framework can also be connected to the Quadruple Innovation Helix (QIH) model through the evaluation of different stakeholders which can be found within the innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems and these are industry, academia, university and civil society.The results of this thesis led to the development of a unique typology. This new proposed typology goes beyond the existing classification schemes, such as the European Innovation Scoreboard classification scheme for countries based on their innovation performance. The typology uses the K-means algorithm for the creation of clusters based on the four helices of the QIH model. It shows not only the performance of the nations, regions and firms but also it gives insights about the characteristics of success for each cluster. For example, the typology revealed that at the national level the most innovative countries such as Sweden have higher performance on the dimension human capital. Consequently, the originality of this thesis is that the new proposed framework compared to other models and frameworks provides a complete multilevel assessment of the innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems at the macro, meso and micro level with the use of the MCDM methods. As far as it is known, there are limited MCDM studies that have used the NWM and the TOPSIS method for the assessment of innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems. Also, there are limited studies that have linked their frameworks for the assessment of innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems with the QIH model. Furthermore, there is a need for adoption of the 3P framework of Carayannis and Provance (2008) since it can be used for various assessments, besides the measurement of firm innovativeness.Another fact of this thesis’s originality is that a typology has not been proposed in the literature until now, that presents clusters at the national, regional and firm level as well as the characteristics that can be found in each cluster. This thesis contributes to the existing academic literature since it covers different themes such as the assessment of innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems, the Triple and the Quadruple/Quintuple Innovation Helix models, the 3P framework and the MCDM methods. Moreover, it provides a wide understanding of how a complete multilevel assessment of innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems can be conducted, through the new proposed framework which can also be implemented with advanced quantitative methods such as MCDM methods. It also extends the use of the 3P framework of Carayannis and Provance (2008) which is used for measuring firm innovativeness. Moreover, this thesis contributes to the evaluation of different stakeholders within the innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems and it can be connected to the different stakeholders of the QIH model. It is also important that the results from the assessment of different innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems led to the development of a unique typology. Τhis thesis contributes to the better understanding of a specific country, region or company. Until now, most of the existing studies focused on the assessment of large firms rather than SMEs whereas this thesis focuses on the assessment of SMEs at the micro level. This assessment at all levels can show strong and weak points and it can contribute also to future improvement efforts. Last but not least, the combination of the quantitative research through the development of the new proposed multilevel framework and the qualitative research through the conduction of case studies at the micro level can be an additional contribution and originality of this dissertation.The results of the framework at the macro, meso and micro level revealed significant findings. First, at the macro level, the framework revealed an overall low performance of Greece and a high performance of Sweden out of 28 countries. These results are in line with the results of the existing frameworks. Then, at the meso level, the framework revealed a moderate performance of the region Crete and a high performance of the region Stockholm out of 212 regions. At the micro level, the framework revealed that the Agrofood industry as well as all sectors perform better on the pillars Culture, Policy and Impacts and present a rather low performance on the pillars Human Capital, Finance, Outputs and Outcomes. This is in line with most of the findings from the three case studies, Avoel, Mi

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