Entrepreneurial ecosystems as practices and resources: Resource acquisition and co-production in Edinburgh and Glasgow

Entrepreneurial ecosystems, the social, economic, political, and cultural contexts that support high-growth entrepreneurship within a region, have emerged as a key topic of research and debate amongst both researchers as well as policymakers and entrepreneurs themselves. Current research on entrepreneurial ecosystems have focused primarily on identifying the core attributes or factors associated with strong ecosystems and in developing new methods to identify the strengths and weaknesses of various ecosystems. But less is known about how entrepreneurs engage with and draw resources from their ecosystem. This paper reports results from a pilot study with 37 high-growth entrepreneurs in Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland. Drawing on practice-based and Bourdieuian methodologies, interviews with entrepreneurs suggest that knowledge about the entrepreneurship process itself is a crucial resource in ecosystems and that the types of resources entrepreneurs gather from their ecosystem changes as the firms grow and based on the entrepreneurs’ backgrounds. This suggests that entrepreneurial ecosystems are dynamic and heterogeneous and that entrepreneurs engage with them differently based on their unique needs.