Erkko Autio

Imperial College London | Imperial · Imperial College Business School

Tässä raportissa on tarkasteltu suomalaisten keskisuurten yritysten kasvua ja kasvun dynamiikkaa tunnistaen sekä kasvun esteitä että ajureita. Keskisuurten yritysten kasvua on tarkasteltu erityisesti kansainvälistymisen ja globaalien ekosysteemien näkökulmasta. Lisäksi tarkasteluun on sisällytetty keskisuurten yritysten sopeutumiskykyä erityisesti...

We investigate patterns in platform ecosystem emergence. We find that the processes of ecosystem emergence—value discovery (designing and establishing an ecosystem value proposition and individual value offerings), collective governance (regulation of participation), platform resourcing (resource acquisition for set-up and scale-up), and contextual...

Resource-constrained new ventures need to decide how to allocate their scarce resources to develop internal functional capabilities in order to survive and grow. Drawing on the longitudinal Kauffman Firm Survey of U.S. start-ups, we explore the performance implications of broad versus narrow scope in new firms' functional capability development and...

Using an action-research case study of a prominent telecom incumbent that established a moonshot factory, whose one of three missions was to explore distant and uncertain transformational bets to re-think digitally-enabled massive mental healthcare provision, we uncover and ad-dress the epistemological limitations of the lean startup heuristic in a...

As businesses reorganize around platforms, shared digital infrastructures become increasingly important for competitive advantage. Ecosystems of open software and hardware technologies, known as “technology commons,” are increasingly dominating the lower levels of digital infrastructures (i.e., below the user-interface level). To leverage technolog...

Research shows that embedded relations can facilitate the resource acquisition process in entrepreneurship. Yet, as relations are dynamic and subject to change, it remains unclear how entrepreneurs can acquire necessary resources when pre-existing ties may not yet or no longer be relevant, sufficient or accessible. Under these circumstances, acquir...

Purpose-The rapid adoption of the ecosystem concept in innovation contexts has led to a proliferation of differing uses. Scholars need to be crystal clear which concept of the ecosystem they are using to facilitate communication between scholars and allow for cumulativeness and creativity. This paper aims to introduce some clarity into the conceptu...

Ecosystems are distinguished from other structural arrangements for value co-production by the nature of their governance and coordination challenges. As ecosystems are marked by their relative non-reliance upon formal, 1–1 supplier contracts to govern and coordinate productive activities, they need to find non-hierarchical ways of orchestrating ec...

Using an action-research and a toolkit development approach, this paper uncovers the epistemological limitations of the Lean Startup and Design Thinking heuristics and proposes a novel 'wicked acceleration' framework to address a grand challenge in the sustainability domain: circular economy innovation. Circular economy innovation is a 'wicked prob...

Academic Abstract Using a longitudinal action-research case study of a prominent telecom incumbent that has recently established a moonshot factory to explore distant bets to address massive digital healthcare provision, we uncover the limitations of the Lean Startup method in tackling 'wicked challenges.' We offer a novel service innovation proce...

Research Summary Digitalization has three fundamental characteristics, reprogrammability infrastructural elementality, and intangibility. Based on these characteristics, it is transforming how firms organize for value creation, delivery, and capture. Its intangibility and infrastructural character largely free economic and business activities from...

The concept of an ‘ecosystem’ is increasingly used in management and business to describe collectives of heterogeneous, yet complementary organizations who jointly create some kind of system-level output, analogous to an ‘ecosystem service’ delivered by natural ecosystems, and one that extends beyond the outputs and activities of any individual par...

We explore value co-creation in ecosystems from three broad disciplinary perspectives: those of strategic management, service marketing, and information systems. These perspectives offer complementary insights into what is a complex phenomenon. We consider the premises, underlying theoretical considerations, insights, and contributions of each, ide...

During the last decade, digitalisation has transformed the character of entrepreneurial activities as for both the entrepreneurial opportunities and the practices to pursue them. In this context, to ensure that the new productivity potential is fully deployed to the benefits of economic growth and societal welfare, policymakers need adequate metric...

This article examines how the prior domestic experience of a founding team influences an entrepreneurial firm’s ability to grow international sales. We argue that such experience leads to domestic mind-sets, which limit a team’s ability to perceive and interpret international stimuli and impact negatively upon international sales growth. Previous s...

The article by Oviatt and McDougall threw the spotlight on international entrepreneurs, on international new ventures, and on their importance in the globalising world economy. Recognising the rich theoretical implications of this phenomenon, they mounted a challenge to received internationalisation process theories and established a new and exciti...

Digitalization is enabling supernormal value generation in emerging industry ecosystems such as SynBio. Hence, the ability to promote a growth trajectory by strategically governing coordination of value generation activities is becoming a desirable but seemingly paradoxical skill. In an effort to learn what are the preferred coordination modes to s...

In recent years, the ecosystem concept has increasingly been adopted within strategy to investigate firm interdependencies. Consisting of an ecosystem value proposition and associated governance system, ecosystems offer a fresh way to think about value creation, co-specialization, and co-evolution among firms. Adopting an institutional perspective,...

Well-functioning innovation environment for startups and accelerators help business activities to grow by bringing radical innovations to the economy. Such development expand innovation activities to new business fields. A goal for this impact study was to find the impact effects for 1) Tekes-funded start-ups; 2) Tekes NIY funding; 3) Accelerators...

Digitalisation is transforming entrepreneurship in two ways. First, it is shifting the locus of entrepreneurial opportunities in the economy. Second, digitalisation is transforming entrepreneurial practices – or the best ways to pursue those opportunities. Combined, the two trends have given rise to a novel, distinctively different cluster type, th...

The Global Entrepreneurship Index provides a detailed look at the health of nations’ entrepreneurial ecosystems. We have developed an index methodology that links countries’ entrepreneurial framework conditions with individual-level entrepreneurial attitudes, abilities, and aspirations. Our composite index gives policymakers a tool for understandin...

Facilitating entrepreneurship is high on many government policy agendas. Policies that support entrepreneurship have become increasingly sophisticated over time, as governments have moved from facilitating the creation of new firms toward supporting high-growth businesses. Many governments currently talk about support ecosystems that cover the enti...

In previous GEI publications, we have described the Global Entrepreneurship Index methodology in detail. Here we describe the structure of the dataset, and a short summary of the GEI methodology.

In this section, we compare the entrepreneurial performance of countries within regions. As we have already seen, the entrepreneurial performance of countries can vary widely across the world. This is because, for example, countries in different stages of development may exhibit similar features, whereas differences across stages of development are...

Last year we pointed out an important challenge for the future of the global economy: Whereas rich countries will be challenged to increase their economic productivity to sustain current standards of living as their populations rapidly age, low-income economies will need to integrate more than two billion young adults into the world economy by 2050...

The modern temple of the entrepreneurial ecosystem is like many temples of the ancient world: both are held up by pillars. Like the pillars of ancient temples—made of sand and limestone held together by cement—the pillars of the economic ecosystem are made of individuals and institutions that are held together by the “cement” of incentives created...

Much of the literature on international new ventures (INVs) focuses on early internationalization and views it as an expression of firm-specific advantages that existed prior to internationalization. This paper presents a normative framework that articulates how INVs can leverage internationalization to drive de novo competitive advantage. Drawing...

Entrepreneurial ecosystems command increasing attention from policy-makers, academics, and practitioners, yet the phenomenon itself remains under-theorized. Specifically, the conceptual similarities and differences of entrepreneurial ecosystems relative to, e.g., clusters, ‘knowledge clusters’, regional systems of innovation, and ‘innovative milieu...

There is an increasing policy interest toward entrepreneurial ecosystems. Yet, little is actually known about how an entrepreneurial ecosystem works and what the related policy challenges are. Drawing on research on ecological economics and community governance, this chapter develops a theoretical framework for entrepreneurial ecosystem management....

Digitalisation underscores the importance of entrepreneurship – that of digital new ventures in particular – as a source of economic competitiveness. This report examines sources of international competitiveness in the digital economy and proposes a framework for monitoring the monitoring the digital entrepreneurial dynamic of the Finnish economy....

Innovation ecosystems are increasingly regarded as important vehicles to create and capture value from complex value propositions. While current literature assumes these value propositions can be known ex-ante and an appropriate ecosystem design derived from them, we focus instead on generative technological innovations that enable an unbounded ran...

This year's Global Entrepreneurship Index features an exploration of digital entrepreneurship ecosystems. The Global Entrepreneurship Index both captures the context features of entrepreneurship and fills a gap in the measurement of development. Building on recent advances in entrepreneurship and economic development, the authors have created an in...

Advances in business process outsourcing and open innovation practices have made the choice of technology commercialization strategy increasingly relevant for technology-based new ventures. We investigate effects of intellectual property (IP)-based, product-based, and hybrid (both product and IP) commercialization strategies on internationalization...

This brief captures the contextual features of entrepreneurship by measuring entrepreneurial attitudes, abilities, and aspirations at both the individual- and country-level. Featuring data from the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index (GEDI), which measures the quality and scale of the entrepreneurial process in 133 countries around t...

We contribute to the recent line of work examining entrepreneurs who participate in multiple ecosystems simultaneously by investigating the mechanisms and outcomes of AppCampus. The AppCampus initiative was a 3-year project seeking to leverage and enhance both the entrepreneurial ecosystem around Aalto University and the Windows Phone innovation ec...

The objective of this study was to analyze the Brazilian entrepreneurial ecosystem in the light of the National System of Entrepreneurship ? NSE theory, through the implementation of the Global Entrepreneurship Index methodology ? GEI. The study indicates that Brazil has low quality average institutional interaction. However, social context is the...

In previous publications, we have described the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index methodology in detail. In this chapter, we describe the GEDI structure, the dataset used to create it, and a short summary of the GEDI methodology.

The Telefónica Index on Digital Life captures the systemic capacity of countries to embrace Digital Life: (1) Digital Openness: how well a country’s digital infrastructure facilitates open access to information; (2) Digital Confidence: how readily and confidently individuals and organisations engage with the country’s digital infrastructure; and (3...

The Telefónica Index on Digital Life captures the systemic capacity of countries to embrace Digital Life: (1) Digital Openness: how well a country’s digital infrastructure facilitates open access to infor-mation; (2) Digital Confidence: how readily and confidently individuals and organisations engage with the country’s digital infrastructure; and (...

On 28 October 2015, the European Commission presented a new Single Market Strategy to deliver a deeper and fairer Single Market that will benefit both consumers and businesses. One of the four pillars of the Single Market Strategy focuses on promoting better opportunities for businesses and consumers. Against this backdrop, the Commission needs...

We analysed the growth impact delivered by a high-growth entrepreneurship policy initiative over a six-year period. Using an eight-year panel that started two years before the initiative was launched and propensity score matching to control selection bias, we found that the initiative had more than doubled the growth rates of treated firms. The ini...

We analysed the growth impact delivered by a high-growth entrepreneurship policy initiative over a six-year period. Using an eight-year panel that started two years before the initiative was launched and propensity score matching to control selection bias, we found that the initiative had more than doubled the growth rates of treated firms. The ini...

How well one country performs relative to others in terms of entrepreneurship is a question of some importance. In this section, we address this question for different country groupings. We do it by groups because the quality and contribution of a country’s entrepreneurship vary systematically in accordance with its level of economic development. W...

Facilitating entrepreneurship is high on many government policy agendas. Policies that support entrepreneurship have become increasingly sophisticated over time, as governments have moved from facilitating the creation of new firms toward supporting high-growth businesses. Many governments currently talk about support ecosystems that cover the enti...

The past decade has witnessed a growing interest in research on the internationalisation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). After two decades of development in international SME literature, both business practitioners and researchers in the field of international business and entrepreneurship are starting to consider whether and how mult...

Digitalization has revolutionized the way we live. eGovernment (e.g., pay fishing license online), mTransportation (e.g., train schedule online), eEducation (e.g., MOOC courses), Facebook, Uber, are just some of the examples of how our daily lives have been transformed with digitalization. Based on the “Internet- for-all” philosophical underpinning...

This volume provides a detailed look at the entrepreneurial ecosystem of different nations by combining individual data with institutional components. The composite index presented in this book, the Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI), aims to measure the quality and scale of the entrepreneurial process in 130 countries around the world. The author...

The Global Entrepreneurship Index provides a detailed look at the health of nations’ entrepreneurial ecosystems. We have developed an index methodology that links countries’ entrepreneurial framework conditions with individual-level entrepreneurial attitudes, abilities, and aspirations. Our composite index gives policymakers a tool for understandin...

Whereas the locus of value creation is shifting from suppliers to customers in technology platform ecosystems, business model innovation theories do not reflect this shift. Consequently, managers adopting the normative recommendations of that literature have underestimated customers’ entailments in value co-creation, which has led to market failure...

This report explores the effectiveness of Finland’s high-growth entrepreneurship policy: whether or not this policy has helped mitigate money and skills gaps in the Finnish entrepreneurial ecosystem, thereby helping new firms grow. Using Finnish data and comparisons with Nordic neighbours and other countries, we conclude that policy in this area, i...

The successful introduction of an ecosystem can rapidly undermine even apparent unassailable positions in seemingly matured and settled industries, however little is known about the processes through which an ecosystem emerges. Building upon the industry lifecycle literature and through a case analysis of six ecosystems, we propose three phases of...

The UK faces two challenges over the coming years: transitioning to a low-carbon energy system while continuing to grow our economy. This will require close collaboration between industry, government and society. But chiefly, it will require innovation to ensure we meet the needs of a growing population in a smarter, more sustainable way. Innovatio...

Although the economic importance of entrepreneurship has been formally recognized at least since the times of Schumpeter over 100 years ago, purposeful policy efforts to harness this driver of economic growth originated substantially later. It is really during the past 30 years or so that policymakers have started to target small- and medium-sized...

Because countries have different institutional structures and provide different incentives for entrepreneurs, we believe it is most useful to think of entrepreneurship as a national system. We therefore present the framework for a National System of Entrepreneurship and the global entrepreneurship and development index (GEDI) as ways to evaluate su...

The objective of this paper is to explore to what extentthe patterns of the internationalisation process described in the new venture (NV) internationalisation theory, developed on the experience and practice of advanced economy firms, apply to the emerging economy context. The paper is a systematic literature review developed on the basis of peer...

The aim of the paper is to advance the development of theory inthe field of international business by seeking to understand to what extent the resource-based view (RBV), built on the experience and evidence from advanced economies, helps understand the internationalisation process of emerging economy SMEs. The paper is built on a systematic literat...

The UK faces two challenges over the coming years: transitioning to a low-carbon energy system while continuing to grow our economy. This will require close collaboration between industry, government and society. But chiefly, it will require innovation to ensure we meet the needs of a growing population in a smarter, more sustainable way. Innovatio...

The environment created by the local economic infrastructure, resources and societal attitudes toward entrepreneurship is key to the success of entrepreneurs in a given region: This environment is called the entrepreneurial ‘ecosystem’. The Santander Enterprise Index is an annual ranking of the UK’s regional entrepreneurial ecosystems: This report...

This report presents a GEDI analysis of the Estonian entrepreneurship ecosystem. The GEDI approach is designed to identify and analyse bottlenecks that hold back entrepreneurial performance in countries, and to design policies that help alleviate those bottlenecks. The insights produced by this exercise take the form of specific policy actions desi...

New ventures need to choose which capabilities to develop first in order to build legitimacy and thus enhance survival. Building on configuration and organizational capability theories, we explored the trade-off between flexibility and specialization strategies in capability development in new ventures. Using the longitudinal Kauffman Firm Survey o...

Given the increasing popularity of the ecosystem construct and its adoption as an alternative model of the collectivities within which organizations operate, its relationship to existing notions of collectivities in organization theory is not clear, or if indeed relevant. We first review extant ecosystem literature, deriving six attributes that ena...

In this paper, we provide a brief review of how entrepreneurship policies have evolved and what implied conceptions of 'entrepreneurship' underlie attempts to measure the phenomenon. We propose the concept of National Systems of Entrepreneurship that recognizes the systemic character of country-level entrepreneurship We apply the Global Entrepreneu...

In this paper, we provide a brief review of how entrepreneurship policies have evolved and what implied conceptions of 'entrepreneurship' underlie attempts to measure the phenomenon. We propose the concept of National Systems of Entrepreneurship that recognizes the systemic character of country-level entrepreneurship We apply the Global Entrepreneu...