Orchestration in Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: Insights into Form, and Content

In this paper, we argue that the governance of entrepreneurial ecosystems involves an orchestration effort in which influential actors take the necessary measures to steer partners and promote ecosystem-level returns without using formal authority. We then review the literature on orchestration to understand how actors organize to collectively orchestrate entrepreneurial ecosystems and explore the activities they should perform to promote ecosystems-level output. We propose a theoretical framework to represent the form and content of entrepreneurial ecosystems orchestration. In relation to form, we discuss when ecosystems have a single or multiple orchestrators and explore their roles, reflecting carefully on the notion of shared orchestration. We then explore the content of orchestration by highlighting the activities orchestrators should execute (i.e. content of orchestration) to steer entrepreneurial ecosystems. We classify them as Horizontal orchestration activities to differentiate them from the practices to orchestrate activities related to the entrepreneurial process in the network. We contribute to the literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems governance by providing an additional means to understand how to steer actors in entrepreneurial ecosystems through relational governance mechanisms. Such knowledge can also offer insights for policy makers interested in creating incentives for entrepreneurial ecosystems as well as help actors understand best practices to stimulate the development of such ecosystems.