Evolution and variety in complex geographies and enterprise policies

Abstract

This Special Issue showcases eight articles on the emergent idea of "entrepreneurial ecosystems". As a subject it has begun to attract early attention because it professes to realise the fundamentally social processes of entrepreneurial practice as against the cartoonlike figure of the heroic entrepreneur much-beloved of those in entrepreneurial studies and policies of a more individualistic persuasion. Furthermore, it aims to assist development of coherence in the field of study occasioned by the great variety of forms and labels given to small and micro-businesses consequent on the erosion in scale and scope of many traditional large enterprises. A further introductory point to be made is that many of the articles on display originate in South Korea where the attenuation of large corporate actors, stagnating national growth rates and government support for entrepreneurship have been one response to the crisis. Hanjin is merely one of the recent casualties of the faltering of globalisation for the South Korean corporate sector, beneficiary of major port-related innovation investment in the past as the South Korea -China comparison paper reveals. Other papers anatomise "platform ecosystems" in ICT applications, green urban policies, clusters, creative industry and regional development. All of these impinge upon government support for entrepreneurial efforts to grow a more social economy and, indeed, economic sociology and geography of regional and national growth.

Configuring the Evolving Role of eWOM on the Consumers Information Adoption

“…Using digital platforms, companies are making strong connections between technology and markets [48]. Results suggest innovative measures to be deployed by marketers for achieving effective and efficient outcomes [61]. The study would be beneficial for the upcoming entrepreneurs too.…”

Building Networks to Harness Innovation Synergies: Towards an Open Systems Approach to Sustainable Development

“…Since basic amenities must reach everyone, it is important that governments ensure their effective provision. Agglomerations of such services at urban locations, including cities, typically lowers coordination costs, yet their efficient allocation requires careful review through stakeholder coordination [70][71][72][73][74][75].…”

“…The proliferation of open innovation in platform ecosystems and its impact on regional development is a good starting point to formulate an extensively open innovation system [74,75]. The discourse on the spread of regional knowledge synergies in the past has largely focused upon urbanization and the mushrooming of cities [70,72,[74][75][76] demonstrated the challenges of implementing a successful triple-helix model in regional university towns using evidence from Australia and Iceland. Drawing on policy and stakeholder assessments, they present the challenges of regional university towns by focusing on suitability, implementation and effectiveness of knowledge-based development policies.…”

The four faces of creative industries: visualising the game industry ecosystem in Helsinki and Tokyo

“…Literature on connections between firms have conceptualised these relationships as clusters (Bathelt, Malmberg, and Maskell, 2004;Lazzeretti, Boix, and Capone, 2008;Maskell and Lorenzen, 2004;Menzel and Fornahl, 2010), constellations (Normann, 2001), networks (Håkansson and Snehota, 1989;Ramírez and Mannervik, 2016;Walker, Kogut, and Shan, 1997), ecosystems and systems (Adner and Kapoor, 2010;Moore, 1996;Stam, 2015;Yun, Cooke, and Park, 2017), or communities (Hirsch, 1972). Despite the multitude of different, usually overlapping, definitions of firm agglomerations what they do have in common is their quest to analyse and theorise why firms decide to be located close to similar actors.…”