CONFIGURATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE-INTENSIVE ENTREPRENEURIAL ECOSYSTEMS: AN ASSESSMENT OF THE STATE OF SAO PAULO, BRAZIL

Knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship is unevenly distributed in geographical space, which is largely attributed to heterogeneous endowments in terms of knowledge, institutions, resources and demand. Nonetheless, specialized literature faces a lack of approaches dealing with the evolutionary dynamics of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems’ components. Based on these foundations, we hypothesize that entrepreneurial ecosystems can assume different configurations, i.e., varying combinations of influential dimensions that can generate similar outcomes in terms of entrepreneurial intensity. In order to address this proposal we use Qualitative Comparative Analysis with fuzzy sets to assess city-lvel data from the State of São Paulo, Brazil. The analytical exercise focuses on five dimensions as causal conditions for the emergence of entrepreneurial ecosystems: Science & Technology, Human Capital, Market Dynamics, Business Dynamics and Infrastructure. Findings underscore the heterogeneous nature of entrepreneurial ecosystems. Nonetheless, a common core is perceived across different configurations, mainly involving the Science & Technology environment and the local Market Dynamics.