Do we need a different term than "ecosystem building"? It's an open question, and I ask it as someone who often uses the phrase.
Back in the US, when I first started working in startup programs and accelerators, the term was gaining popularity. There was even a movement I got to be part of, Startup Champions Network, that advocated for the term and declared it a new type of career field. Over the last few years, the term has also grown in use worldwide. While the term arrived in Germany a little later than in the US, even here I see it used often in LinkedIn profiles or when people describe what they do. Most people in global startup land have at least some sense of what it means—whether positive or negative.
The people I know who use the phrase tend to use it with a positive connotation. They mean supporting startups, entrepreneurs, innovators, and founders, a way of helping inspire more entrepreneurship in their local or national ecosystems. As my colleague Matthias likes to say, "all very good stuff!" When I was running startup programs in Oregon, I used the phrase when we supported rural entrepreneurs, and when we tried to build more resources for minority and female founders.
Much has been written about building entrepreneurial ecosystems, including by the Kauffman Foundation (Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Playbook), Brad Feld (The Startup Community Way), Victor W. Hwang (The Rainforest), and many others worldwide.
Here's the question I have, and something I've been discussing with colleagues and others involved in entrepreneurial ecosystems, often at a national level.
Can you really build an ecosystem?
Or is it something that exists, and much like other strange concepts in the universe, perhaps like energy, can neither be created nor destroyed? Please bear with me for a moment.
We must define and differentiate between building and growing an entrepreneurial ecosystem. For sure, ecosystems can grow. They can also shrink, something many people don't talk about and rarely investigate, especially at a qualitative level. But growth is not the same as building. Building implies creating something new, or making something bigger.
But is "building" really the right word to use for something that already exists, and that can be healthy, tired, sick, or dying? I find the question increasingly important, especially as the term is becoming commonly used to describe running a startup program, hosting startup events, or having some form of founder community.
As I see more of these roles referred to as doing "ecosystem building", it begins to beg the question. Is that the term we should be using, and are the activities that fall under "building" actually influencing an entrepreneurial ecosystem in the way one might think?
Most definitely, you can build a startup event. You can build an accelerator program. You can build an investment fund, a venture clienting product for corporates, and many other founder programs. Still, I would argue that these activities are not equivalent to building an entrepreneurial ecosystem. This is building the "things", the outputs, inputs, transformers, even environments that make the connected "parts" of systems theory.
To take it "meta" bro, the ecosystem might be influencing you to build these parts—not the other way around. A crazy and humbling thought!
Still, that might be a more useful approach to examining entrepreneurial-adjacent activities within a system. If we postulate that ecosystems can neither be built nor destroyed, then maybe we're not building ecosystems. Maybe we're building things inside of those ecosystems. More concerning, perhaps some of the things we build aren't even needed in those ecosystems!
I sometimes struggle to understand why there are hundreds, even thousands, of startup programs in Europe, yet the number of scaleups seems relatively low. (And yes, I've been responsible for around 30+ of those programs.) Or how we launch and host so many startup events, and yet there are still only a few in Europe that founders actually say, "Wow, that was really worth my time!"
Building has its place. Building things for startups and entrepreneurs, or even other related elements, can be valuable, well-intentioned, and, honestly, healthy for the ecosystem. But building can also have the opposite effect.
Building unnecessary things that distract founders, cause division, or divert attention from what is actually needed in an ecosystem can damage it beyond recognition.
One example of this is what I call "startup theatrics," where people pretend to help startups to boost their image or to be perceived as innovation experts. My personal pet peeve example is "startup hubs" and "programs" built by people who never worked in a startup, are not entrepreneurial, and care little about creating economic results or real founder outcomes.
My question to these folks: are you really building the ecosystem, or are you building more bureaucracy, hierarchies, distractions, and marketing content within an ecosystem? What is the actual input and output? How does what you do affect the health of the ecosystem?
Is it possible that we are building too many unnecessary "parts" in the system?
In my first job running startup programs, we sometimes used the term ecosystem builder. But the term I loved was ecosystem "catalyst". And not by coincidence, my first job title, official and in writing, was "venture catalyst". Having a background in chemistry definitely increased my affinity for the term. ;)
In chemistry, a catalyst is a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction. But it isn't actually one of the ingredients that gets changed, and it doesn't end up in the final product. It merely reduces the activation energy required for a chemical reaction to occur. In business terms, it's like the friend who made a great connection to a potential client. You would have met the client anyway, but the friend lowered the energy required to do so.
In English, catalyst sounds cool. In some languages, it doesn't quite roll off the tongue. I'm looking at you, German. Ökosystem Katalysator doesn't roll off the tongue. Nonetheless, I love the concept it implies, especially for those who want to do what they call ecosystem building within a regional economy.
I think that if more people adopted this mindset, especially those of us building and running startup programs, we might see more positive effects on the ecosystem—especially those using public funding (again, I raise my hand).
If we shifted our energy and efforts from building things to catalyzing entrepreneurship, the economic effects would be incredible. Imagine if the energy spent was for making things better for founders, easier for startups, and more inclusive for innovators and future-thinkers?
Activities focused on building connections, reducing red tape, opening doors, connecting markets, developing talent, retaining scaleups, long-term business mentoring, and celebrating entrepreneurship, and not simply building another short-duration, content/marketing-heavy program and hub? From my view, this would contribute to an ecosystem's growth. Perhaps even the word "building" could finally be considered.
Saying "I catalyze startup ecosystems" is arguably not the nicest way to put it. It sounds a bit superior and a little too individualistic, especially when an ecosystem is a complex organism, shaped by the interactions among its parts. However, ecosystem building is to me just as presumptuous, if not more so.
Recently, I've been trying to say things like "I contribute to the growth of an ecosystem". Or, "I catalyze components in an ecosystem." I've used sentences like "I work within a startup ecosystem to help the connections and the growth, to help the positive inputs be multiplied, and to reduce the effects of the negative inputs and levers." Again, nothing that is smoothly rolling off the tongue.
And, I will sometimes talk about what Brad Feld writes in The Startup Community Way, about the "levers" of an ecosystem, and how when people try only to build things like programs, funds, and innovation spaces, these often have the least impact (see his thoughts on the physical levers of an ecosystem).
The difference in the terms "building" versus "catalyzing" is also (as I will probably write about soon) dependent on the context of startup communities versus entrepreneurial ecosystems. Again, it is a matter of semantics, but there is a real difference.
A startup community, as some define it, exists within an entrepreneurial ecosystem, which can contain multiple startup communities. It is therefore one of the things you can create, and if it's healthy, it will contribute to an even healthier and more connected entrepreneurial ecosystem. Community building has long been studied in the academic literature and applied across nearly every aspect of society, including among firms that might be considered less innovative and entrepreneurial.
If you tell me you build startup communities, I'll take your word for it. "All very good stuff!" But if you tell me you build entrepreneurial ecosystems, I will struggle to rein in my skepticism.
Entrepreneurial (and innovation) ecosystems are so complex—and unique—that I doubt a single human or even an organization can truly comprehend them in depth, much less build one from scratch. Maybe artificial intelligence, distributed data, and quantum computers will change this, but when you consider the ecosystem elements of culture, society, and belief systems, you'll forgive me for being skeptical.
If I'm honest with myself, I'll probably continue to use the term "ecosystem builder" (sometimes intentionally) as it has become a common expression that helps people understand my career and job. And I'll avoid pedantically correcting anyone who does use it.
But please consider for yourself whether it is worth even a brief moment of self-reflection, because, as one mentor of mine often says, "words do matter." And if we focus intentionally on catalyzing rather than building, perhaps we can observe greater positive impact on our local entrepreneurial ecosystems, as well as on the economy, society, and prosperity of the regions in which we live.
