The idea in brief
Entrepreneurial ecosystems are usually treated as local systems bounded by a city or region. This article argues that digitalisation, international mobility and cross-border communities increasingly allow entrepreneurs to assemble knowledge, relationships and resources from several places at once. It introduces geographically unbounded entrepreneurial ecosystems: entrepreneur-centred systems that span borders and combine local, international and digital sources of support.
What the article shows
- Unbounded ecosystems are border-spanning, entrepreneur-centred and often organised through hybrid or digital communities.
- They differ from locally bounded ecosystems across four dimensions: the resources provided, inclusiveness, the spread of activities and governance.
- The ecosystem is no longer only an external local context; entrepreneurs can partly configure the ecosystem around the opportunity they are pursuing.
Implications for entrepreneurs
- Map the best source of each resource—knowledge, talent, finance, customers and legitimacy—rather than relying on a single city or region.
- Develop boundary-spanning capabilities: join international communities, translate knowledge across contexts and maintain relationships across digital and physical settings.
- Assess how open and governable an ecosystem is before committing time to it; access and complementarity may matter more than geographic proximity.
Implications for policymakers
- Design support around flows of knowledge and resources across places, not only around assets located inside one jurisdiction.
- Make programmes more accessible to outsiders and create portable support that follows ventures as they connect several ecosystems.
- Coordinate ecosystem policy across cities, countries and digital platforms, while tracking who gains access and who remains excluded.
This plain-language summary was prepared with AI assistance from the published abstract and available article information. The published article is the authoritative source; practical and policy implications are interpretive.