Startup Ecosystem Rankings

TL;DR

This paper analyzes global startup ecosystem rankings, highlighting their growing importance in policy and decision-making, and addresses the research gap by examining their characteristics and suggesting future research directions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of startup ecosystem rankings and identifies gaps and future directions in this emerging research area.

Findings

Rankings influence policy and economic decisions.

Growing scientific interest in startup ecosystems.

Identified gaps and future research directions.

Abstract

The number, importance, and popularity of rankings measuring innovation performance and the strength and resources of ecosystems that provide its spatial framework are on an increasing trend globally. In addition to influencing the specific decisions taken by economic actors, these rankings significantly impact the development of innovation-related policies at regional, national, and international levels. The importance of startup ecosystems is proven by the growing scientific interest, which is demonstrated by the increasing number of related scientific articles. The concept of the startup ecosystem is a relatively new category, the application of which in everyday and scientific life has been gaining ground since the end of the 2000s. In parallel, of course, the demand for measurability and comparability has emerged among decision-makers and scholars. This demand is met by startup ecosystem rankings, which now measure and rank the performance of individual ecosystems on a continental and global scale. However, while the number of scientific publications examining rankings related to higher education, economic performance, or even innovation, can be measured in the order of thousands, scientific research has so far rarely or tangentially addressed the rankings of startup ecosystems. This study and the related research intend to fill this gap by presenting and analysing the characteristics of global rankings and identifying possible future research directions.