Despite the overwhelming use of the metaphor ‘ecosystem’ in academia, industry, policy, and management, exact definitions of what ‘ecosystems’ really comprise are scarce and often inconsistent. Existing vague descriptions in the literature do not consider the boundaries of respective agglomerations, hence, they impede the evaluation of performance and outcome measures of respective ecosystems. This special issue is a first attempt to trace the ‘ecosystem’ discussion back to its roots—the ancient oikos, coined by the Greek philosopher Hesiod (700 BC), and aims to critically reflect on the usage of the term ‘ecosystem’, briefly summarize the extant literature and grasp the main features of entrepreneurial ecosystems, namely the economic, technological, and societal dimensions of entrepreneurial ecosystems. We intend to focus on the key elements that characterize an ecosystem, and hence, untangle under what conditions entrepreneurial firms shape and influence economic, technological, and societal thinking within their ecosystem.

The concept of entrepreneurial ecosystems has been used as a framework to explain entrepreneurial activities within regions and industrial sectors. Despite the usefulness of this approach, the concept is undertheorized, especially with regard to the evolution of entrepreneurial ecosystems. The current literature is lacking a theoretical foundation that addresses the development and change of entrepreneurial ecosystems over time and does not consider the inherent dynamics of entrepreneurial ecosystems that lead to their birth, growth, maturity, decline, and re-emergence. Taking an industry lifecycle perspective, this paper addresses this research gap by elaborating a dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystem lifecycle model. We propose that an ecosystem transitions from an entrepreneurial ecosystem, with a focus on new firm creation, towards a business ecosystem, with a core focus on the internal commercialization of knowledge, i.e., intrapreneurial activities, and vice versa. Our dynamic model thus captures the oscillation that occurs among entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs through the different phases of an ecosystem's lifecycle. Our dynamic lifecycle model may thus serve as a starting point for future empirical studies focusing on ecosystems and provide the basis for a further understanding of the interrelatedness between and coexistence of new and incumbent firms.

Conceptual models of the quadruple helix have largely taken a macro perspective. While these macro perspectives have motivated debates and studies, they fall short in understanding value creation activities at the micro level of the quadruple helix. The purpose of this paper is to address this deficit by focussing on the fundamental research question how value is collectively created, captured, and enhanced at the micro level of the quadruple helix. Drawing on theoretical considerations centred on simmelian ties, boundary work and value postures (motives, creation, destruction and drivers), we develop a micro level conceptual model of principal investigators (PIs) as value creators in the quadruple helix. Scientists in the PI role engage in boundary spanning activities with other quadruple helix actors. This engagement builds strong simmelian ties with these actors and enables PIs to develop collective value motives by bridging diverse knowledge and creating common value motives. Our conceptual model extends understanding of the quadruple helix at the micro level and highlights the importance of PIs having strong simmelian ties in order to realise collective and individual value motives. The paper concludes with some suggestions for future avenues of research on this important topic.

Research on entrepreneurial ecosystems has largely taken a macro-perspective to better conceptualize and map the determinants and evolution of entrepreneurial ecosystems, yet has neglected the micro-level interactions of various entrepreneurial ecosystem actors. Recent criticisms of entrepreneurial ecosystems have centered on the lack of explicit case and effect relationships, attribution, units of analysis, the different use of network definitions as well as the static nature of existing frameworks. The purpose of our paper is to present a micro level principal investigator (PI)-centered governance framework that addresses these posited criticisms and in doing so identifies the value creation indicators (benefits), PI capabilities, the problem categories (costs), and solving mechanisms that PIs can use to govern effectively and efficiently large-scale publicly funded research programs. In leading such research programs, PIs interact with different actors within entrepreneurial ecosystems and manage governance issues, conflicts, and tensions effectively at the micro level to deliver the anticipated benefits and costs for each actor. Our framework provides the basis for future empirical research on entrepreneurial ecosystem as we have attributed cause and effect at an individual actor level and conceptualized the governance challenges at a micro rather than at the macro level that overcomes the static nature of previous frameworks.

The focus of this paper is to review the qualitative case methods that have been used in technology transfer research over the last 20 years from 1996 to 2015. Qualitative case methods allow for more in-depth analyses and provide the opportunity to place research into a certain context due to the selection of e.g. specific sectors, institutions, countries, etc. Using a systematic literature review of five of the top journals in the field of technology transfer research, namely Journal of Technology Transfer, Research Policy, Science and Public Policy, R&D Management and Technovation, it yielded 107 articles using the search terms: "Technology Transfer" AND ("Case Study" OR "Case Method" OR "Qualitative"). Our findings found a clustering of themes using qualitative case methods around technology transfer mechanisms and TTOs, academic entrepreneurship, university-industry collaboration, commercialization as well as R&D and firm knowledge transfer. We also identify trends in case method technology transfer research with respect to authorship, location of papers, sectoral contexts, data collection, numbers of cases and data analysis software. We conclude our paper discussing the implications of trends and themes and suggest that researchers need to reflect on used terminology to describe qualitative case methods and their utilization. We conclude by postulating a to advance technology transfer researcher further there is a need for more plurality of data collection methods for qualitative case methods research.