The search for reliable and replicable strategies to stimulate regional economic prosperity is as old as the field of economic development itself. These strategies have included the encouragement of direct investment, business attraction and retention, and sector-based cluster strategies. More recently, the role of entrepreneurship has been explicitly recognized, descriptively and prescriptively. Glaeser et al. and others have shown that one essential element in sustained regional growth is the presence of significant concentrations of indigenous small and growing businesses. On the surface, these empirical findings are consistent with the popularization of the entrepreneurship ecosystem metaphor and the subsequent launching by governments and civic organizations of a plethora of startup encouragement programs (e.g., the Startup America Partnership; Startup Chile) as a lead economic development strategy.
