What makes an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem more conductible to Entrepreneurial Dynamics than another ? Entrepreneurial Ecosystem research raised as a hot topic, leading to progresses on its elements, network, actors components, or levels of analysis. However, some scholars regret the absence of empirical analysis of EE as a whole to understand how EE configuration operates. To open this perspective we propose an unexplored inter-organizational ties analysis among all Entrepreneurial Ecosystem actors, at a country level scale. Nested in Network Theory perspective, we run an exploratory research in five low income African countries, using innovative research methods (Quantitative Graph Theory, web scraping, fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis) to understand the organisational patterns in these Entrepreneurial Ecosystem having an impact on their outcomes. At the core of this perspective we develop the impact of the central actor role of these Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, which is a key causal condition of their outcomes, in our case entrepreneurial dynamics levels and trends in those low income countries. This research underlines how important are Entrepreneurial Ecosystem network attributes to facilitate the efficient distribution of entrepreneurial nurturing components to entrepreneurs. It highlights also the importance of a financial central actor to sustain high Entrepreneurial Dynamics levels.

Grégory GUENEAU, Didier Chabaud and Marie-Christine Chalus-sauvannet

https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/AMBPP.2021.13891abstract