Blueprint Silicon Valley? Explaining Idiosyncrasy of Startup Ecosystems

Abstract

The concept of startup ecosystems has received significant attention from policy makers, particularly in the hope of transferring Silicon Valley performance effects to their own region. Previous research emphasizes the need to consider the unique and distinctive nature of the specific regional ecosystem in focus when developing policies for ecosystem development without a thorough specification and theoretically founded explanations. In this article, we address this gap and develop propositions why each ecosystem is unique in nature by employing resource-based reasoning. The article concludes that ecosystems are highly idiosyncratic and are, therefore, inimitable and non-transferable to other regions due to working isolating mechanisms. JEL: D830, D850, L140, L260, O180, R110 null The creation of the English-language version of these publications is financed in the framework of contract No. 607/P-DUN/2018 by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education committed to activities aimed at the promotion of education.

Keywords

• startup ecosystem
• idiosyncrasy
• resource-based approaches