The triple helix and the quality of the startup ecosystem: a global view.
| Autor | Flechas, Ximena Alejandra |
Introduction
The global social, environmental, and economic challenges urge firms to find a way of generating sustainable innovation to improve or maintain their position or, failing that, to ensure their survival. The ongoing business dynamics show two particular aspects for generating innovation: first, the need for integrating different actors in the innovation processes (Hernandez-Trasobares & Murillo-Luna, 2020) and second, the predominant role of new enterprises or startups in addressing disruptive innovations (Archibugi, 2017).
Regarding the first aspect, we can find several examples of innovations - particularly high-impact ones - developed in a collaborative way amidst universities, research centers, incumbent firms, incubators, accelerators, public institutions, and startups, or example, the Google autonomous car and China's High-Speed Rail. Notwithstanding, to coordinate such innovation efforts, new structures of economic and value relationships are required. Traditional approaches, like firm-supplier relation or integrated hierarchies, are not suitable for this type of collaborative innovation, which is more in line with ecosystem orchestration (Adner, 2017) and requires interdependency, coopetition, complementarity, and collaboration configurations (Jacobides, Cennamo, & Gawer, 2018). Therefore, the concept of ecosystem emerges to explain how different actors interact with various relationships to consolidate the value creation cycle.
The second aspect unveils the crucial role of startups as drivers for innovation (Bower & Christensen, 1995). Archibugi (2017) argues that newcomers are more willing to undertake radical innovation projects during crises than incumbent firms, which are more involved in exploitation-oriented projects. Additionally, new enterprises are responsible for creating jobs, boosting the economy, improving quality of life, and improving competitiveness.
Therefore, startups require ecosystems appropriate for developing innovations. We have identified that a large part of the literature has pointed out several factors that affect the development of a healthy startup ecosystem "characterized by its ability to produce, support, and nourish high-growth entrepreneurship" (Song, 2019, p.570). For instance, the synergy between academic institutions and firms (Pugh, 2017), the policies and entrepreneurship incentive programs, governmental efforts to reduce taxes and bureaucracy during the creation of new enterprises, institutional support, and access to critical infrastructure (Cheah, Ho, & Lim, 2016). Furthermore, some studies (e.g. Saad & Zawdie, 2005) have analyzed the impact of all these factors jointly, considering the effects of integration among them on regional entrepreneurial activities.
However, there is still a need for morestudies of statistical models using different techniques (Guerrero & Urbano, 2017), especially to analyze the impact of the relationships among all these factors jointly on the quality (understood as the healthiness) of the startup ecosystem from a global perspective. In an attempt to contribute to these studies, we drew upon the framework of the triple helix (i.e. the university-industry-government interaction, Etzkowitz, 2008) to analyze the influence among the actors and their interrelations on the development of a healthy startup ecosystem, which is capable of producing, supporting and nurturing high-growth entrepreneurship. The research question addressed by this study is "Is there evidence of the influence of the triple helix on the quality of startup ecosystems from a global perspective?" To address this question, we examine the cross-section data of 35 countries by using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Our results show that none of the latent variables individually have a considerable impact on the quality of the startup ecosystem. However, when analyzed together, the results were significant. This finding corroborates the existing literature on the triple helix that argues that the university-industry-government interactions enable innovation creation (Cai & Etzkowitz, 2020).
We contribute to the innovation and entrepreneurship literature in different manners: first, by proposing a set of latent variables to operationalize the constructs of the triple helix and the quality of the startup ecosystem and second, by providing empirical evidence about the influence of the triple helix from a global perspective, based on the analysis of the innovation efforts of 35 countries.
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. The next section summarizes the theoretical background supporting this study. In the following section, we present our conceptual framework and hypotheses. Next, we describe the research methods, including data sources, data modeling and data analysis. The findings are then presented and discussed. Finally, concluding remarks, limitations and further research opportunities are outlined.
Theoretical background
Ecosystems in entrepreneurship
The term ecosystem has been copiously used to describe how firms and institutions create a competitive environment to develop innovations (e.g. Adner, 2017; Jacobides et al., 2018). "Ecosystem" refers to an interdependently but nonhierarchically related multi-actor network that develops an innovative offering (Adner, 2017; Tsujimoto, Kajikawa, Tomita, & Matsumoto, 2018). From a structuralist perspective, five key elements configure an ecosystem: activities, actors, positions, links and artifacts (Adner, 2017). The activities are the complementary and interdependent actions undertaken by ecosystem members to create and capture value (Tsujimoto et al., 2018). The actors, or community, refer to the entities that undertake such activities, e.g. suppliers, complementors, and customers (Adner, 2017). The positions specify where the actors are located regarding the activities, i.e. upstream or downstream from the focal firm (Adner, 2017). The links specify the transfer or transaction of materials, information, funds, or influence among the actors (Adner, 2017). Finally, artifacts are the products, services, or resources (tangible or intangible) required to develop the offering (Adner, 2017).
The general use of the term "ecosystem" in the literature has resulted in a plethora of different constructs, in many cases redundant, overlapping, conflicting, and, in others, complementary. Fundamentally, the entrepreneurship literature has distinguished five labels for ecosystems: knowledge ecosystem, entrepreneurial ecosystem, innovation ecosystem, business ecosystem, and startup ecosystem.
According to Clarysse, Wright, Bruneel and Mahajan (2014, p. 7), the knowledge ecosystem refers to the clusters and organizations, which "facilitate collective learning and increase the speed of innovation diffusion." This type of ecosystem entails a combination of academic, research institutions and other support organizations that create, promote, and disclose knowledge. On the other hand, the entrepreneurial ecosystem centers on the interacting "social, political, economic, and cultural elements within a region that support the development and growth of innovative startups and encourage nascent entrepreneurs and other actors to take the risks of starting, funding, and otherwise assisting high-risk ventures" (Spigel, 2017, p. 50). Innovation ecosystem relates the actors and their relationships that are involved "to enable technology development and innovation" (Oh, Phillips, Park, & Lee, 2016, p. 1). The main concern for this type of ecosystem is the connection and efforts to develop the research economy (driven by fundamental research) and the commercial economy (driven by the marketplace).
On the other hand, the business ecosystem and startup ecosystem focus on the firms and their environment. Furthermore, the business ecosystem concentrates on the business context and the central partners and activities that create and capture value (Tsujimoto et al., 2018). Finally, the startup ecosystem is a label widely promoted among practitioners and entails the actors and the efforts of different organizations involved in developing the startups (Startup Blink, 2019). Deeb (2019) posits that the key players of the startup ecosystem are the entrepreneurs, mentors, investors, incubators, universities, corporations, associations or events, the government, and the service providers. Therefore, this study has considered the construct of the startup ecosystem.
The triple helix model
The triple helix is constituted by a spiral model of innovation where the interactions among the three institutional spheres - university, industry, and government - enable communication flows and joint efforts, allowing the creation of new organizational formats for the generation of innovation, and thus contribute to the development of the knowledge-based economy (Etzkowitz, 2008). One of the central ideas of this model is that, in addition to the interinstitutional collaborations, which take place through their traditional roles, each sphere "takes the role of the other" (Cai & Etzkowitz, 2020, p. 18). For instance, industries continue producing goods and services but, at the same time, devote efforts to developing research and providing instruction to their collaborators, as some kind of university.
Champenois and Etzkowitz (2018) point out that universities have a prominent role in the model due to their capacity of generating and transferring knowledge and technology (e.g. medical technologies or nanotechnology). The authors highlight the transformation of the traditional role of universities (merely as a source of human resources and knowledge) as a key innovation stakeholder. Therefore, universities also enable the creation of intermediary institutions, such as technology transfer offices or science parks, that facilitate...
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