Shifting paradigms in entrepreneurial ecosystems

Big data and analytics are changing businesses and territories. Data allow event prediction and support artificial intelligence, thus enabling the automation of processes, the transformation of companies, and the creation of value for the development of sustainable and prosperous entrepreneurial ecosystems. The entrepreneurial ecosystem is a system of actors and infrastructures supporting the creation and development of innovative business projects. Like a living organism, it comprises heterogeneous players interacting dynamically, where specific contributions and connections are essential to foster entrepreneurship, thus creating value for the entire economic and social system. Ecosystems can exploit the potential of big data to progress and create value. Policy makers, universities, financial institution and other ecosystem actors can give a purpose to data and derive useful information for a thriving innovative entrepreneurship. Since actors are heterogeneous, examining their characteristics is essential to identify their behaviors, abilities, and needs, in order to improve the efficiency, consistency and performance of the ecosystem as a whole. The contribution highlights both the importance and the potentiality of actors in an entrepreneurial ecosystem, thus improving our current understanding of how their role and position evolve following the exploitation of big data and analytics.