Within the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem: Is Innovation Clusters’ Strategic Approach Boosting Businesses’ Sustainable Development?

Abstract

The article focuses on the creation and the development of the entrepreneurial ecosystem around the innovation clusters. Clusters are believed to have a well-defined strategic approach aimed at boosting businesses’ sustainable development, especially if clusters are centred around small and middle-sized enterprises. Having undertaken a piece of phenomenological qualitative research, we found that large companies were more open to cooperation and sustainability than the small and middle-sized ones, thus initiating and developing innovation clusters around them (particularly in high-technologized industries such as the automotive and Information Technology). Additionally, we highlight that a sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem is based on strong pillars, of which small companies’ capabilities, including the entrepreneurial ones, are innovation-driven, and place them in the centre of the innovation cluster. This piece of research also provides relevant insights for private and public organisations and policymakers in order to co-create a local innovation and entrepreneurship strategy. Our findings have implications for both cluster literature and the field of entrepreneurship.