Entrepreneurial startup ecosystems: what can smaller ecosystems learn from their top-tier counterparts? Present considerations and future directions

Understanding the success of regional entrepreneurial startup ecosystems is crucial for the advancement of local economies, job creation and growth. The current paper takes a unique theoretically focused look at common ecosystem elements that regional startup ecosystems may need to pay extra attention to in order to become as competitive as top-tier startup ecosystems. In our analysis, we compare two prominent models on elements of ecosystems: the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Elements by Stam and van de Ven (2019 and the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Diagnostic Toolkit (2013). We conclude this paper with drawing up eight propositions and an invitation for future empirical research to test these propositions in practice.