9 - 16 February 2021 | online
Iulia Stroila, research associate at S2BMRC and PhD Candidate at FH Münster and The University of Adelaide, presented her research at the ACERE 2021 conference and contributed to the ongoing discussions within the entrepreneurship community. Her first paper from the cumulative PhD project entitled "Mapping Well-Being in Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: A Conceptual Framework" was selected for the Paper Development Session. The PDS sessions are always in high demand at the ACERE conference. This year the ACERE PDS program received more than 30 submissions for the 12 available sessions.
ACERE stands for Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research Exchange, an annual conference in its 17th yearhosted by Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in collaboration with Bond University, Queensland. Due to the ongoing uncertainty with the COVID-19 crisis, ACERE 2021 has been held completely virtual.
The Paper Development Sessions are expert-led roundtable discussions of selected papers that were submitted to the main academic program of ACERE. The goal of PDS sessions is to facilitate in-depth quality feedback on these papers in a small group setting. During the PDS sessions and the PhD consortium, Iulia Stroila got the opportunity to discuss her research with senior top entrepreneurship scholars and receive valuable feedback.
The first paper from the cumulative PhD project entitled "Mapping Well-Being in Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: A Conceptual Framework" aims at investigating the well-being of entrepreneurial ecosystems. The paper is co-authored by Prof. Dr. Carolin Plewa, Deputy Dean (Research) at the University of Adelaide, and Prof. Dr. Paul Steffens, ECIC Director & Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Adelaide.
Abstract
Despite increased interest from academics and practitioners in entrepreneurial ecosystems, existing research has done little to explain the heterogeneous nature of these ecosystems. It remains unclear why some ecosystems fail to develop or go into decline while some develop successfully. In this conceptual paper, we seek to expand the extant discourse by drawing on the notion of ecosystem "well-being" from ecology. We theorize that entrepreneurial ecosystems vary in their level of well-being, conceptualized as their ability to support the quality, diversity, resilience and opportunity and choice provision for entrepreneurship. Our study makes theoretical and managerial contributions by investigating what entrepreneurial ecosystem well-being is and how it manifests itself.