TY - JOUR
T1 - Start-up Communities as Communities of Practice
T2 - Shining a Light on Geographical Scale and Membership
AU - Van Weele, Marijn A.
AU - Steinz, Henk J.
AU - Van Rijnsoever, Frank J.
PY - 2018/4
Y1 - 2018/4
N2 - The development of start-up communities is seen as critical to the successful development of entrepreneurship in a region. However, it remains unclear what exactly start-up communities are and how they can be facilitated. Ambiguity concerning the geographical scale and membership of start-up communities leads to different conceptualisations. In this paper, we apply communities of practice (CoP) theory to understand how conceptualisations of start-up communities work and how they can be facilitated. To this end, we qualitatively study start-up communities in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, Australia. Our results show that start-up communities that are confined to a particular workspace strongly resemble a CoP. Furthermore, many elements of CoPs can also be found in regional start-up communities. Finally, we find that workspace communities have more direct and top-down facilitation activities, while regional start-up communities have more indirect and bottom-up facilitation activities.
AB - The development of start-up communities is seen as critical to the successful development of entrepreneurship in a region. However, it remains unclear what exactly start-up communities are and how they can be facilitated. Ambiguity concerning the geographical scale and membership of start-up communities leads to different conceptualisations. In this paper, we apply communities of practice (CoP) theory to understand how conceptualisations of start-up communities work and how they can be facilitated. To this end, we qualitatively study start-up communities in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, Australia. Our results show that start-up communities that are confined to a particular workspace strongly resemble a CoP. Furthermore, many elements of CoPs can also be found in regional start-up communities. Finally, we find that workspace communities have more direct and top-down facilitation activities, while regional start-up communities have more indirect and bottom-up facilitation activities.
KW - Communities of practice
KW - Entrepreneurial eco-systems
KW - Geographical scale
KW - Membership
KW - Qualitative research
KW - Start-up communities
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85023194500&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/tesg.12277
DO - 10.1111/tesg.12277
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85023194500
SN - 0040-747X
VL - 109
SP - 173
EP - 188
JO - Journal of Economic and Social Geography
JF - Journal of Economic and Social Geography
IS - 2
ER -