The evolution of regional entrepreneurship policies: “no one size fits all”

In the last two decades, entrepreneurship policies have gone through a radical transformation in many parts of the world. New theoretical and empirical approaches have helped to identify better the drivers of entrepreneurial creation, the main actors in the process, and the significant contribution of entrepreneurship to socio-economic prosperity. One of the main conclusions of these new theoretical and empirical approaches is that the drivers and outcomes of entrepreneurship are heavily shaped by place. There is no single ideal entrepreneurship policy formula because entrepreneurial mechanisms take a different form depending on different places. However, concepts such as path dependency, industrial ecology and heritage, connectivity, culture, and intra-and interregional knowledge spillovers are all linked in different ways with regional entrepreneurship in general and the Entrepreneurial Ecosystems literature. This paper discusses the impacts of these different influences on the evolution of modern entrepreneurship policies, examines what the current evidence points to, and identifies areas for further consideration. Examples will be drawn from different countries and regions. On the basis of the evidence reviewed, the paper contends that both conceptual and policy-thinking regarding the relationships between entrepreneurship and place are increasingly shifting to the challenges facing less successful regions, even though the current approaches are heavily based on the insights of successful places.