Matthias Menter - Böcker

This book explores the intersection of digital technologies, entrepreneurship, and resilience, focusing on how small businesses and entrepreneurial ecosystems navigate challenges such as technological maturity, digital transformation, and economic crises. As digitalization reshapes industries and markets, creating a “digital safety net” has emerged as a prominent mechanism for entrepreneurial resilience. Digitally advanced entrepreneurs leverage technology and innovative business models and adopt agile strategies to grow, while digitally uncertain entrepreneurs struggle to maintain their business models and customers. Digital transformation has been pivotal during the Covid-19 pandemic and enabled greater diversification, enhanced adaptability, improved access to global markets, and novel forms of knowledge collaboration, altogether increasing firms’ propensity to survive and grow. Through topics ranging from blockchain applications in vulnerable ecosystems to the impact of digital overload on well-being, the chapters in this volume examine diverse strategies for adaptation in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. Understanding the mechanisms behind digital technologies and entrepreneurial resilience is essential for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners to develop rapid policy responses.This book is an indispensable resource for students, scholars, and researchers interested in entrepreneurship, digital innovation, and business resilience. It is also an essential resource for policymakers and business leaders seeking to understand the evolving role of digital technologies.The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Entrepreneurship & Regional Development.

Bringing together cutting-edge insights and critical perspectives, this Research Handbook advances the understanding of the development, dynamics, and different facets of entrepreneurial ecosystems.Structured around seven compelling themes, this Research Handbook examines the foundations, the mindset, voice and practice of key actors, and distinct cross-cultural contexts of entrepreneurial ecosystems. Chapters consider the important role of academic entrepreneurship before exploring the governance and evolution of digital entrepreneurship and sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems. They conclude by addressing one of the most challenging practice and policy issues, the measurement of entrepreneurial ecosystems. Adopting a broad contextualization approach that draws on empirical insights and perspectives from an array of geographical, institutional and cultural contexts, it paves the way for promising future research avenues in entrepreneurial ecosystems.Interdisciplinary and thorough, this Research Handbook is an essential resource for students and scholars of social entrepreneurship, organizational innovation, and public policy and business management more broadly. Its explorations of place-based innovation and mission-oriented approaches to entrepreneurship will appeal to entrepreneurs and policymakers alike.