18 - 20 May 2022 | Kolding
Iulia Stroila and Annika Wesbuer presented their research at the 21st Nordic Conference on Small Business Research 2022 in Kolding, Denmark. The conference, hosted this year by the University of Southern Denmark, aims to advance research in the field of small business and entrepreneurship and encourage the exchange of ideas between researchers within the entrepreneurship community.
During the PhD consortium, Iulia Stroila and Annika Wesbuer got the opportunity to discuss their PhD projects on entrepreneurial ecosystems and, respectively, blockchain technology in higher education institutions with senior top entrepreneurship scholars and receive valuable feedback.
During the main conference, Iulia Stroila presented the paper "Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Well-Being: A Conceptual Framework", co-authored with Paul Steffens and Carolin Plewa in the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem track chaired by Steffen Korsgaard from the University of Southern Denmark. The paper elaborates theoretically on what a "healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem" means by leveraging the ecological metaphor of ecosystem well-being. Through a configurational approach, authors extend unidimensional notions of ecosystem health to a multidimensional framework and propose that ecosystems reflect different constellations of four dimensions: opportunity and choice provision, quality, diversity, and resilience. In their conceptualisation, the links among individuals, ventures, and the supportive environment are explicitly acknowledged to reflect the multilevel character of ecosystem well-being.
Stroila has also participated in the Paper Development Sessions chaired by Astrid Heidemann Lassen (Aalborg University). The PDS was an expert-led roundtable discussion of selected papers submitted to the conference. The goal was to facilitate in-depth quality feedback on these papers in a small group setting. The paper entitled "Unpacking Typologies of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Well-Being" draws on the concept of ecosystem well-being from ecology and qualitative data to build typologies of entrepreneurial ecosystem well-being. Through a multiple-case method of eight different entrepreneurial ecosystems of Amsterdam, Berlin, Medellín, São Paulo, Silicon Valley, Stockholm, and Tel Aviv and 51 interviews with ecosystem leaders, heads of incubators or accelerators, and representatives from government support agencies from respective ecosystems, configurations of well-being dimensions are mapped to understand the health of entrepreneurial ecosystems.