Contextual and evolutionary perspectives on entrepreneurial ecosystems. Insights from Chris Freeman’s thinking

ABSTRACT

In recent years a concept gaining much traction amongst both economic and policy communities is that of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (EE). We are interested in this concept because it has clear roots in innovation system thinking and can be argued to represent a contemporary iteration of ideas around systemic understandings and policy approaches to economic development, innovation, and entrepreneurship. In our work we have been exploring the links between earlier innovation systems and newer entrepreneurial ecosystem concepts. In this essay, we expand this line of thinking by interrogating the EE concept from the perspective of the work of Christopher Freeman, often called the father of innovation studies. It is our argument that by combining contemporary debates in EE with the more ‘classic’ literatures from the innovation systems cannon, we can gain a deeper understanding of the trinity of economic development, innovation, and entrepreneurship to be of benefit both to the research and policy communities. Specifically, in this paper we zoom in on two specific elements of Freeman’s thinking on innovation systems: context specificity and evolutionary dynamics and push EE thinking forward using these insights.

KEYWORDS:

• Innovation systems
• entrepreneurial ecosystems
• Christopher Freemann
• evolutionary approach
• regional economic development
• Contextualization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 The idea was not completely new, as Freeman drew on ideas from List (Freeman 1995), Marx, Schumpeter and Bernal (Freeman 1982) and the ‘neotechnology’ literature (Fagerberg et al. 2011) among others for his ideas.

Additional information

Funding

Jana Schmutzler is grateful for the financial support this research received from Colciencias through grant 121577657885. Rhiannon Pugh is grateful for the financial support this research received fromSvenska Forskningsrådet Formas through grant 2018-01053 and from Vinnova through grant ‘Entrepreneurial Experimentation’.