Entrepreneurial ecosystems: Strategies on access to capital, competence, and network

Abstract

This paper addresses the regional ecosystem dynamics for sustaining a high percentage of young entrepreneurial firms. Extant research holds that young entrepreneurial firms are dependent on access to capital, competence, and networks available in a diverse urban environment to succeed. However, there exists huge variation between the failure rate of young entrepreneurial firms between comparable cities. A comparison across Scandinavian capital cities shows that the survival rate among Oslo based newly founded firms is lower, compared to firms located in Stockholm and Copenhagen. This is paradoxical since this region scores high on several relevant measures, and thus justifies an in-depth qualitative study to reveal how known factors play together to increase start-up firm survival rate. We conducted a strategically sampled embedded case study of 19 start-up firms across 8 different industries, supplemented with 3 interviews with investors, from the Oslo-region. Our findings reveal important mechanisms in interaction across ecosystem stakeholders that can explain start-up firm survival. Based on these finding we identify 21 entrepreneurial needs and provide 11 propositions for further research as well as recommendations for practitioners and policy makers aiming for regional entrepreneurial eco-system development.