ENI involved in Special Issue on Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Leadership

Through Sophia Behr, ENI is represented in the international guest editorial team of the Special Issue “Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Leadership: Processes, Practices, and Contexts”, alongside Aki Harima, Bruno Fischer, Philip Roundy, Erik Stam, and Maribel Guerrero.

Research on entrepreneurial ecosystems has generated extensive knowledge about the actors, resources, and structural conditions that shape regional entrepreneurial activity. Yet, considerably less is known about the processes through which ecosystem actors provide direction, negotiate priorities, coordinate independent stakeholders, and enable collective action.

The Special Issue addresses this gap by focusing on the mechanisms, practices, and contextual conditions of entrepreneurial ecosystem leadership. It seeks to advance our understanding of how leadership emerges, evolves, and is enacted across different ecosystem settings.

Topics of interest include, among others:

• Leadership Emergence and Evolution: How leadership roles and styles transition across different stages of ecosystem maturity.
• Orchestration Practices: The specific routines, governance tools, and strategies used by universities, corporate anchors, incubators, and policymakers to align independent actors.
• Contextual Influence: The impact of regional, institutional, socio-cultural, and digital environments on leadership effectiveness.
• Inclusive Governance: Approaches to leadership that foster long-term resilience, diversity, and multi-stakeholder value within regional innovation networks.

The call is open to conceptual, empirical, and methodological contributions and is particularly relevant to scholars working at the intersection of entrepreneurship, strategic management, regional development, innovation, and policy.

In addition, the Special Issue is connected to the conference “Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in Times of Rapid Transformation,” taking place in Tallinn on 11–12 February 2027. A dedicated paper development workshop for the Special Issue is planned as part of the conference, providing researchers with an opportunity to discuss and further develop their work.

The submission deadline for the Special Issue is 31 December 2027.

Further information is available here:

Full Call for Papers: https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/entrepreneurial-ecosystem-leadership-processes-practices-and-contexts/