Publications

Despite the popularity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach in science and policy, there is a scarcity of credible, accurate and comparable metrics of entrepreneurial ecosystems. This is a severe shortcoming for both scientific progress and successful policy. In this paper, we bridge the entrepreneurial ecosystem metrics gap.

Entrepreneurial ecosystems have become a prominent concept, yet in its current state, the concept itself represents a paradox. While it draws on a rich intellectual history and provides an opportunity to synthesize different strands of research, it is also under-theorized and the mechanisms that govern ecosystem evolution are not well understood.

There is a growing interest in ecosystems as an approach for understanding the context of entrepreneurship at the macro level of an organizational community. It consists of all the interdependent actors and factors that enable and constrain entrepreneurship within a particular territory. Although growing in popularity, the entrepreneurial ecosystem concept remains loosely defined and measured. This paper shows the value of taking a systems view of the context of entrepreneurship: understanding entrepreneurial economies from a systems perspective.

Why Africa’s ‘Big Four’ are not the ‘Best Four’. A few years ago, The Economist concluded that Africa has enterprising people but too few businesses. Africans are far more likely to be self-employed than people in richer parts of the world, but the continent does not produce enough productive and profitable small and medium-sized businesses. More small and medium-sized businesses would increase productivity, reduce poverty, create more and better jobs and address many other societal challenges. The key question is: How can the conditions for entrepreneurship, business creation and growth, be improved in Africa?