Introduction: Helping birds to fly: Introducing start-up incubation ecosystems

Abstract

Start-up firms play a critically important role in the development of our economy. Through the process of creative destruction (Schumpeter, 1934), the new replaces the old, and soon, a significant share of economic activity will be performed by firms that do not exist today. Start-ups create jobs, improve economies, increase social mobility, facilitate innovation, and generate other benefits (Aldrich & Ruef, 2006). They serve as engines of regional development (Fritsch & Mueller, 2004) and bring to life innovations that contribute to resolving global challenges (Fini, Rasmussen, Siegel, & Wiklund, 2018). Indeed, the promotion of entrepreneurial activity is often a key ingredient in economic and social development policies (McCann & Ortega-Argilés, 2016). However, start-ups do not occur and develop in a vacuum. Just as no man is an island, no start-up is an island. Instead, they grow in close interaction with their surrounding environments, leveraging existing resources, and engaging in exchange with other parties (Gnyawali & Fogel, 1994; Van de Ven, 1993). The types of resources and relationships established during the early years have a formative influence on the development, growth and performance of startups (Beckman & Burton, 2008). More recently, the notion of an entrepreneurial ecosystem has become a famous analogy for understanding the role of the environment in entrepreneurship (Malecki, 2018; Mason & Brown, 2014). The analogy stems from the similarity between the life and development of living organisms in natural ecosystems and those of start-ups in entrepreneurial ecosystems. Living beings represent complex structures that need constant energy supplies obtained from their environment to survive and grow. Their environments constitute multi-layered systems that provide them with external energy that is passed on from one trophic level to the next (i.e., solar energy, plants, herbivores, and predators) until decomposers return nutrients to the environment. This large community of interdependent living beings, together with the nonliving components of the environment,