Chapter 1: Global, Regional, and National Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: Exploring the Interplay Within the MENA Region

The discourse on entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) has increasingly shifted toward refining its theoretical foundation, as much of the existing scholarship is predominantly conceptual (Kansheba & Wald, 2020). While definitions vary, the critical distinction in recent interpretations lies in specifying elements constituting an EE, broadly classified as social, cultural, or material (Spigel, 2017; Spigel & Harrison, 2018). This conceptualization of EEs as systems helps identify their elements, provided they are sufficiently developed. The ecosystem’s output encompasses any entrepreneurial activity that directly or indirectly contributes to the economy’s net output or enhances the capacity to generate additional output, thereby increasing aggregate welfare (Stam & Van de Ven, 2021). Therefore, it proposes a connection between the elements of EEs and entrepreneurial activity – a relationship that recent studies have begun to empirically examine (Queissner et al., 2024). While a vibrant and supportive EE is necessary for the start-up and growth of an enterprise, the entrepreneurial undertaking would largely depend on the entrepreneurs’ ecosystem perception (Manimala et al., 2019). This perception is shaped by individuals’ evaluation of their surroundings, which in turn confect the overall attractiveness or repulsiveness of the ecosystem, consequently affecting their entrepreneurial intentions (Elnadi et al., 2020; Kumar & Das, 2019; Olutuase et al., 2018). This opportunity identification represents a unique entrepreneurial behavior, yet its processes and dynamics remain mysterious (Gaglio & Katz, 2001). The problem with studying EE from the system perspective is that it focuses on understanding them at the macro level, failing to incorporate other relevant variables or treating them as simple control or exogenous variables such as context and location (Stam & Van de Ven, 2021; Welter, 2011). Stam and Van de Ven (2021) framework highlights the influence of cultural, social, political, and economic structures on EE dynamics, emphasizing the need for research to engage with diverse geographic contexts. Therefore, investigating the micro and meso levels is critical in shaping a holistic understanding of EEs, which, unlike clusters or innovation ecosystems, place individual entrepreneurs, rather than firms, at the framework’s core (Stam & Spigel, 2017; Wurth et al., 2022).