The Importance of Collaboration for Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: A Case Study of Oslo (Norway) and Florianópolis (Brazil)

The desire to better understand entrepreneurial ecosystems and how they develop, combined with the curiosity in understanding the entrepreneurial ecosystems of two regions of great importance for the author: Oslo (Norway) and Florianópolis (Brazil), two distinct cities where entrepreneurship has been flourishing and the relevance of the technology industry is increasing, guided this thesis. It begins with economic theories, the knowledge spillover theory, the explanation of geographical clustering and entrepreneurial ecosystems. These concepts are relevant for the reader to under-stand the importance of the study of entrepreneurship and how this subject can be related to physical locations and their contexts. The method adopted is a multi-case empirical investigation through 14 interviews of stakeholders in the two entrepreneurial ecosystems in question (Oslo and Florianópolis), combined with secondary data collected. The results demonstrate that in both regions talent is very relevant, and stakeholders seem to work in collaboration to each other, what appears to enhance the ecosystem’s success. Even though Oslo and Florianópolis are situated in considerably different contexts, some similarities were found, especially in recent actions and in the interaction between participants. Critics from all the interviewees were relatively similar as well. However, the performance of these entrepreneurial ecosystems was not assessed nor compared. The hereby discoveries support what Stam & Van de Ven (2019) propose – the existence of 11 elements in entrepreneurial ecosystems –, and what Qian, Acs & Stough (2012) argue regarding talent attractiveness. Additionally, the author suggests a theory that is consistent with propositions from Spigel (2017) and Malecki (2018): Successful entrepreneurial ecosystems are the ones that are complete – with quality in all the elements from Stam & Van de Ven (2019) – but also have abundant collaboration and entrepreneurial culture, thus increasing the competitiveness of the eco-systems’ participants