INSIGHT - A Policy View on the Future of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Research
This post is based on research published in our paper “The future of entrepreneurial ecosystems research: Toward a policy-oriented research agenda” (Hess et al., 2025).
Beyond “That Don’t Impress Me Much”: Making Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Research Matter to Policymakers
Have you ever enthusiastically shared your research insights with a policymaker only to be met with the academic equivalent of Shania Twain’s famous refrain: “That don’t impress me much”? This all-too-common experience highlights a growing disconnect between entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) research and policy practice—a gap our recent paper in the Journal of Business Venturing Insights aims to address.
The Promise and Challenge of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Research
Entrepreneurial ecosystem research emerged with tremendous promise. Unlike earlier concepts focused purely on economic clustering or innovation systems, the EE approach distinctively emphasizes two critical aspects of entrepreneurship:
- Productive entrepreneurship as a key mechanism of economic development (building on Schumpeter and Baumol’s foundational work)
- Entrepreneurs themselves as central actors in ecosystem development (influenced by Brad Feld’s pioneering ideas)
This dual emphasis represented a paradigm shift—suggesting a potential “privatization” of entrepreneurship policy and highlighting the power of bottom-up approaches. The concept’s intuitive appeal quickly captured the imagination of policymakers and researchers alike.
Yet somewhere along the way, something went awry. As academics (myself included) worked to add theoretical complexity and rigor to the EE concept, we may have inadvertently reduced its clarity and actionability for policymakers. The result? In many regions, actual policies have outpaced their research foundations, leaving policymakers to design and implement EE initiatives without the evidence-based guidance research was supposed to provide.
A Collaborative Approach to Bridge the Gap
To address this growing disconnect, we took an unusual approach to developing our paper. Rather than the traditional academic model of a few authors working in isolation, we engaged in what we call a “round-robin brainstorming” process involving 58 EE scholars from 21 countries at the 2024 EE Research Spring School in Stuttgart.
This collaborative method allowed us to systematically gather diverse perspectives without letting any single voice dominate. The resulting insights were then validated and prioritized by European policymakers across various political jurisdictions to ensure our research agenda addressed genuine policy needs rather than merely academic interests.
Reflecting on the Path Walked: Evolution of the EE Field
Our collective reflection revealed several key tensions in how the EE field has developed:
The Balancing Act of Theory and Practice
While academic research has made significant strides in identifying core elements of thriving ecosystems and broadening the scope of entrepreneurship policy, there has been a tendency to force various issues into the EE framework when other concepts might be more appropriate. Industrial clusters, regional innovation systems, and innovation districts all remain valuable frameworks depending on specific policy goals and regional contexts.
A particular challenge has been the lack of clear boundary conditions—ambiguity around what constitutes an ecosystem, who should be included, and at what spatial level it should be analyzed. This ambiguity has led to difficulties in empirical work and policy implementation, especially since the fluid boundaries of ecosystems rarely align neatly with administrative boundaries where policies are typically formulated.
Theoretical Development: Beyond Borrowed Concepts
The EE field has predominantly built on imported theories—social capital theory, network theory, and complex systems theory. While these have yielded valuable insights, truly advancing policy-oriented research will require developing indigenous theories that fully embrace the complex, non-linear evolution of ecosystems and their place-dependent nature.
A critical dimension often overlooked is time. Our analysis suggests that future theoretical development should incorporate three temporal aspects:
- The timing and alignment of key activities (market entries, funding cycles, product development phases) with broader economic cycles
- Non-linear dynamics and emergence, where small actions can have outsized impacts over time
- Long-term evolutionary dynamics of places that are missed when relying on short-term references
Data and Methods: The Need for Methodological Pluralism
Our collective analysis highlighted limitations in current research approaches. Quantitative studies have been largely cross-sectional, failing to capture the dynamic nature of EEs. Qualitative case studies, while valuable, often struggle to capture truly systemic views. And most studies focus on macro-level factors, potentially missing the proximate causes of ecosystem performance differences.
Moving forward, we see tremendous opportunity in:
- Exploring and triangulating novel data sources across multiple levels of granularity
- Employing diverse methods including system dynamics, agent-based modeling, social network analysis, and AI
- Integrating research more directly into policy design processes through participatory approaches
A Policy-Oriented Research Agenda: Seeing Both the Forest and the Trees
The heart of our paper proposes a structured research agenda organized around two key dimensions:
- The policy process stages: design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation
- The core analytical dimensions of the EE framework: context/structure and mechanisms/processes
By mapping research questions to this framework, we can ensure that future research directly addresses the needs of policymakers while advancing theoretical understanding. From the twelve research questions we identified, policymakers prioritized three areas as particularly crucial:
1. Establishing EE Boundary Conditions for Policy Design
A pressing research need is understanding the role of different political jurisdictions (city, region, country) in ecosystem evolution. This includes addressing the complex challenges of multi-level governance and aligning capabilities, capacities, and funding structures across administrative boundaries.
The research question driving this area: What is the role of different political jurisdictions in the evolution of EEs?
2. Understanding Connectivity Effects in Policy Implementation
Policymakers highlighted the critical importance of understanding how both intra-ecosystem connections (within an EE) and inter-ecosystem connections (between EEs) influence development. This includes addressing fragmented relationships among actors and reducing harmful competition between localities.
The key research question here: How do intra- and inter-ecosystem linkages influence the development of EEs?
3. Expanding Metrics for Effective Policy Evaluation
Finally, policymakers emphasized the need for better data collection methods and more targeted measures for policy diagnostics and evaluation. This includes developing metrics that can justify investments in EE inputs and measure both short-term and long-term impacts.
The central research question: How do novel methods and data enhance the capabilities for dynamic EE monitoring? What are the trade-offs between existing indicators and new measures?
Making Your Research Matter: A Call to Action
Rather than offering abstract ideas, our paper provides a concrete roadmap for producing research with genuine policy impact. I encourage you to use it in three ways:
1. As a Diagnostic Tool
Bring the framework to a policymaker or entrepreneurship support organization in your region within the next month. Use it to start a conversation—and focus on listening rather than pushing your own ideas. Ask what challenges they face, what matters to them, and how your research might contribute.
2. As a Dialogue Tool
Organize an exchange that brings together researchers from different streams and unexpected guests like policymakers or ecosystem builders. Take inspiration from our round-robin process to mix expertise, challenge assumptions, and co-develop ideas that require more research attention.
3. As a Design Tool
Take 15 minutes during your next break to reflect on your current projects: How might your new understanding of how policymakers leverage research insights reshape your research design or questions? How can you better address policy-relevant issues and contribute to one or more steps in the policy process?
Beyond Academic Boundaries: The Value of Collaborative Policy-Oriented Research
What made this project particularly rewarding was the genuine collaboration between researchers and policymakers. By engaging policymakers in validating and prioritizing our research agenda, we ensured that our academic work addressed real-world needs rather than merely advancing theoretical debates.
This approach embodies what Van de Ven calls “engaged scholarship”—research that bridges the gap between theory and practice through meaningful dialogue with stakeholders. It recognizes that the most impactful research doesn’t just analyze from a distance but actively engages with the phenomena and people it studies.
Conclusion: Toward Transformational Impact
The entrepreneurial ecosystem concept emerged with the promise of transforming entrepreneurship policy and practice. While it has made significant contributions, its full potential remains unrealized due to the growing disconnect between research and policy implementation.
By adopting the policy-oriented research agenda we’ve proposed—focusing on boundary conditions, connectivity effects, and improved metrics—researchers can help close this gap. In doing so, we can ensure that EE research fulfills its original promise: providing actionable insights that help regions foster productive entrepreneurship and sustainable economic development.
The future of entrepreneurial ecosystem research lies not just in refining concepts or debates within academic circles, but in developing insights that genuinely inform and transform policy and practice. Only then can we expect to hear policymakers say, “Now that does impress me much!”
