Abstract
This article investigates how place and place-based funding shape enterprise support ecosystems, using a qualitative semi-case study of Devon and Cornwall in Southwest England. While interest in entrepreneurial context has grown, the spatial dimensions – how place, geography, scale, and local characteristics influence entrepreneurship – remain underexplored. Addressing this gap, the article contributes in two key ways. First, it offers a relational understanding of place, showing how entrepreneurial ecosystems are shaped by both wider political and economic forces and local factors such as socio-economic histories, gender cultures, social networks, place narratives, and targeted funding and support policies. Second, it presents empirical findings on how enterprise support providers and nascent entrepreneurs perceive the strengths and shortcomings of policies and funding aimed at disadvantaged places and populations. The findings highlight the importance of long-term, sustained funding in building local institutional depth, fostering sustainable and inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems, supporting underrepresented groups, and sustaining local expertise in enterprise support. In sum, the article deepens the theoretical framing of place in entrepreneurship while offering practical insights for designing effective, place-sensitive enterprise support policies.
Introduction
Place plays a fundamental role in our lives, providing us with the resources – ideally – for thriving, belonging, working, playing, and resting. Given this centrality, it is striking that, with notable exceptions, the field of entrepreneurship has been slow to engage with the concepts of place, space, and spatiality (or ‘spatial context’ – Welter, 2011). Welter’s (2011) important call to theorise context in entrepreneurship has prompted a body of work situating entrepreneurship in context. However, far less work has focused on developing theories of context (Welter and Baker, 2021), and less still has meaningfully engaged with ‘spatial context’ or ‘place’. This is undoubtedly due to the logistical and definitional challenges involved – not least, the difficulty of bounding spatial contexts or places (Cresswell, 2014). Drawing on theories of place, space, and region from human geography, this article responds to Welter and Baker’s challenge, by examining the role of place in enterprise support. Since funding for enterprise support lands locally, this focus is especially pertinent. Thus, building on this rationale, the article explores the successes and limitations of enterprise support for women entrepreneurs who face additional barriers beyond the well-documented challenge of gender – specifically, those barriers operating in peripheral, poor, rural regions – in this case, Devon and Cornwall in the UK. This spatial focus offers clarity on the significance of place and illuminates the role of place-specificity.
Alongside ‘place’, this article uses the language of the ‘entrepreneurial ecosystem’ (EE), a metaphor that has recently become widely adopted to signify the ‘interdependent actors and factors’ (Stam and van de Ven (2021: 809), that provide the context for entrepreneurship in particular areas (e.g. regions, cities, and neighbourhoods). It is a metaphor that has quickly established a central position in entrepreneurship scholarship, likely because it appears to encompass the spatial dimension that many are now seeking to embed in their models. According to Stam and Van de Venn (2021), the EE includes ‘resource endowments’ (e.g. people, intermediaries, and physical infrastructure) and ‘institutional arrangements’ (e.g. culture and formal institutions), but the metaphor as applied to entrepreneurship in a region is ‘loosely defined, under theorized and not adequately measured’ (p 809). Further, there is no universally accepted definition, nor agreement about whom, and what kind of entrepreneurship, it is relevant to (Aguilar, 2021; De Brito and Leitao, 2020). It is more often applied to understand high growth entrepreneurship, but there are growing numbers of calls to apply it to micro-business entrepreneurship and the diverse actors and sectors therein (e.g. Brush et al., 2019; McAdam, 2023; O’Brien et al., 2019). This article adopts the EE concept as shorthand for sets of services, networks (and their people), and resources that exist in a place (Malecki, 2018; Muller and Korsgaard, 2018) as well as the place itself as an actor, not just a stage. It draws upon interviews undertaken (in 2019/2020) with 22 ecosystem members in Devon and Cornwall to identify their experiences of EE support.
The contributions of the article are twofold. First, the article deepens the theoretical framing of place in entrepreneurship, offering a relational understanding of place in response to calls in the literature to theorise the entrepreneurship-place relationship (Welter and Baker, 2021; Welter et al., 2019). Second, the article contributes a place-based focus on the successes and failures of policy and funding aimed at disadvantaged places and people. Issues of scale, with their inherent complexities, form the foundation of this discussion. The account investigates the conditions under which effective support ecosystems can thrive, and the difficulties of achieving this. It explores the role of geographic scale in place-based policy including the scale at which solutions to problems are decided. It considers policy that is often national – or extra national (in this case, EU and UK national policy) and the ways in which agencies, regions, and places respond to this policy and attempt to make it work at the local level. The article is novel as it focusses upon the experiences of business support providers in bridging the gaps between national and extra national policy and local needs of disadvantaged populations in peripheral places. Significantly, it captures a moment in time (the outset of the 2020s) when the policy and funding landscape, especially for Cornwall, are about to change, owing to Brexit and the loss of EU financing. It also considers the experiences of a small number of end-users – entrepreneurs who have accessed the services and are attempting business under less-than-ideal personal circumstances. The intensive approach of this investigation results in illustrative experiences of practice from key informants, in specific places, at a specific time.
Theoretical framework
Spatial context and place
The article premises that entrepreneurship happens somewhere, and the nature of that somewhere is of foundational significance to the ways in which entrepreneurship can be done, whether it can be done, and who can do it. Further, spatial variance is all-important when it comes to entrepreneurship, not least because entrepreneurs are embedded in networks, many of which are spatially bound, and all of which are subject to norms and power-relations. Although entrepreneurship scholars have begun to consider the spatial contexts within which entrepreneurship happens, deepening our understanding of types of setting such as ‘the rural’ for entrepreneurship, this work often falls short of a deep dive into an understanding of place (because it is not their purpose). Additionally, entrepreneurship scholars have not yet begun in earnest, to consider how entrepreneurs in turn engage with and construct places (Welter and Baker, 2021: 1155). As a result, ‘place’ has been incorporated into the narratives of entrepreneurship as a setting or a stage (theorising entrepreneurship in context) – but not as an active agent in entrepreneurship (theorising the role of context) – neither have place or spatial context been well understood in entrepreneurship theory as changing, and changed by, entrepreneurs (Welter and Baker, 2021). There are notable exceptions in the gender and entrepreneurship field (e.g. Alshareef, 2022; Ekinsmyth, 2011; Harrison et al., 2020; Welter et al., 2014), but until it is common for entrepreneurship studies to engage deeply with the concept of place and embrace this recursive relationship, studies can only ever achieve partial understanding of the role of spatial context. This requires greater depth of focus and a narrowing of the breadth of generalisability (Shepherd and Williams, 2023) and in spatial context terms, it translates to narrowing the spatial scale to observe place specificity and entrepreneurial ecosystem actors as mutually constitutive. This theoretical approach underpins the current study, despite and because, as the article demonstrates, ‘scale’ and ‘place’ are such complex constructs.
When developing theories of spatial context for entrepreneurship scholarship, the obvious place to search for theory is human geography, a discipline centrally concerned with the development of geographical thought and the recursive relationship between people and place. For this to be fruitful, Geography’s central spatial concepts (place, space(time), mobility, landscapes, territory, and scale) demand more than uncritical or cursory application – instead they require careful definition and examination. First, we must establish the differences between ‘spatial context’, a concept increasingly arising in entrepreneurship scholarship, and ‘place’. Both concepts are used in human geography, but they serve different purposes and are grounded in distinct theoretical traditions: Place is widely used and theorised by authors such as Tuan (1997), Massey (1991), and Cresswell (2014) to refer to a meaningful, lived, and emotionally experienced location arising from factors such as identity, belonging, and power-relations. Place thus emphasises the qualitative and the emotional relationships between people and their surroundings. Conversely, ‘spatial context’ refers to the more abstract, quantitative, and analytical, often referring to locational dimensions such as population density, local economic conditions, resource endowment, and other more quantifiable qualities.
The conceptual starting point for this article is that ‘place’ is not only the most foundational concept in human geography but also central to the fabric of everyday life and studies of all human endeavour, entrepreneurship, and enterprise included. Human beings live out their lives in places, so entrepreneurship scholarship needs to address both place and spatial context.
The treatment of this apparently simple concept of ‘place’ in human geography has varied across the last 100 years, moving from a concept involved in thick descriptions of the earth’s ‘regions’ and what a place contains, to relational understandings of place that focus upon the linkages and flows that constitute a place (Massey, 1991). Places have a location, a physical landscape (locale), and a ‘sense of place’ (Agnew, 1987), the latter referring to the meanings, both individual and shared, that are associated with a place. Thus, place is a combination of location, landscape, and meaning, or as Cresswell (2014) puts it, ‘places are locations with meaning’ (113). Crucially, places are not passive backdrops or stages, but characters with agency to affect people. There is a recursive relationship between people and place, and by extension, between place and entrepreneurship.
However, the concept of place is fraught with danger. We must grapple with its uneasy politics. When place is conceived as bounded and exceptional – with a deep historical rootedness, notions of power, difference, and exclusion can come to the fore. Shared meaning and belonging for some can mean the simultaneous definition of not-belonging for others (Sibley, 2002). Places can come to be understood as bounded and unique, static, and in need of defence against forces of change. This is a reactionary and exclusionary sense of place (Massey, 1991). In her foundational writing, Massey counters these forces by arguing that places are relational – that their exceptionality arises as much from their links to what is outside of them, as to what is inside. This relational view of place focusses on the movement and flows of people, goods, ideas, cultures, and finances into and away from a place to its connections with places beyond it, and the unique constellation of these flows that constitute the landscape and meaning of the place within. This view, Massey labelled, is a ‘global’ or ‘progressive’ sense of place (Massey, 1991). This ‘relational turn’ has been applied widely in the humanities to apply to other phenomena such as identity and is ideally suited to the multiple realities of entrepreneurship.
Such a dynamic, active view of place requires a similar view of space and of regions. Geographers have argued that space, like place, is a product of interrelations – and that this is true across any scale from the global to the hyper-local (e.g. the body or the kitchen). Taking this view, the task of defining a place, be it a region, city, town, or neighbourhood, becomes inexact because boundaries or borders are blurred, and somewhat arbitrary. Administrative and nation state borders are easier to define, but these are not static through time. Thus, defining and understanding the geographies of places is tricky – places, like identities, are not fixed but constantly in a state of becoming. Indeed, for some Geographers, seemingly, but not actually contrary to the above discussion, territorially defined studies simply make no sense (Amin, 2004), and these scholars, like Massey, suggest adopting the lens of connectivity. For similar reasons, entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) are difficult to map directly onto place, though the EE concept is often used as a spatial one (Malecki, 2018; Theodoraki et al., 2023). The lens of connectivity (i.e. networks) works for EEs too – and it is this connected entrepreneurial support network, including its entrepreneurs, that this article considers to be the local EE.
Depleted and peripheral regions
The article applies this relational spatial approach to the counties of Devon and Cornwall, focussing primarily on sub-county geographic scales due to the considerable variation within them. Whilst there is some scattered wealth throughout both counties, their socio-economic characteristics together with path-dependence (economic-industrial past), rurality, and geographic location (in relation to the UK and Europe) mean that many of their rural areas, towns, and communities are impoverished (Ballas et al., 2018; Howard et al., 2022; Muller and Korsgaard, 2018) and could be classified as ‘depleted’.
Depleted and peripheral regions have received some limited academic attention in relation to entrepreneurship (McKeever et al., 2015; Parkinson and Howorth, 2017), and there have been suggestions that they are a uniquely rich context for entrepreneurship research (Johnstone and Lionais, 2004). Losing or depleted regions can necessitate unconventional and unique forms of enterprise and organisation which can broaden our understanding of enterprise beyond such contexts. Equally significant, as regimes of production change through time, uneven development processes will always lead to winning and losing regions, and understanding their survival toolkit is vital. Depleted communities, where economic assets, once crucial in earlier phases of capitalism have been exhausted, remain places to which people feel a strong attachment and this enduring connection can motivate, or necessitate, individuals to start businesses, either to sustain their livelihoods or to enhance the quality of life for themselves and others within the community (Johnstone and Lionais, 2004; Sattler, 2024). This is despite considerable place-based infrastructural and business-resource hurdles. Indeed, we could expect that unconventional or economically depleted areas might necessitate ‘unconventional’ businesses and resourceful, adaptable business owners and that this might be a benefit to, and foundation of, innovation (Henderson et al., 2024). Additionally, depleted communities may offer their residents little local choice beyond business ownership (e.g. a lack of employment) and moreover, we might expect other forms of disadvantage to sometimes accompany residents of these areas, adding to the necessity of self-employment.
It is important to acknowledge that depleted or deprived communities can offer location-based advantage to enterprise (Flogel and Gartner, 2015) and should not only be judged as a poor ‘other’ to the core (Pugh and Dubois, 2021). Research has uncovered material benefits that deprived neighbourhoods have for enterprise. For example, strong, embedded social networks and social capital can be used as a resource for business and labour (Kubes and Chvojkova, 2020), and the presence of cheap unused or underutilised buildings can be available to facilitate enterprise (Flogel and Gartner, 2015). The latter has been identified as crucial and well-explored as a benefit to the creative industries – but less so to enterprise in other sectors. These resources may be attractive to potential entrepreneurs within and outside those communities.
There can be further benefits to location in a depleted region. Notably, as an EU Objective One funded region between 2000 and 2020, Cornwall received over one billion euros in structural funds (European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the European Structural Fund (ESF)) for economic performance judged below 75% of the EU average. Consensus is lacking on the benefits for inclusive growth (Di Cataldo, 2017), with some arguing that investment has failed to address the structural needs of less affluent regions owing to an over-focus on business development (Copeland and Diamond, 2022). Indeed, it is also important to challenge the neo-liberal policy view that impoverished communities should help themselves through engaging in unsustainable businesses (Ahl and Marlow, 2021). Whatever the lived realities, research has identified a reduced income gap across the funding period in Cornwall (Di Cataldo, 2017) and there were estimates that by 2016, EU investment had created 31,000 jobs and supported more than 26,000 businesses in the county (Julian German, Cabinet Minister, 2016).
Place narratives as resources for enterprise
This article contends that place narratives are important to enterprise, especially enterprise in notable or unique places. These are an intangible dimension of place, alongside others such as ‘place attachment’, ‘place image’, and ‘sense of place’. All play a crucial role in shaping the entrepreneurial landscape, circulating through discourse and influencing entrepreneurial behaviour. Such narratives can be constructed deliberately by place marketeers but are just as likely to be produced by local people and entrepreneurs who can thus be considered both the producers and the products of place (Lichrou et al., 2014). They constitute resources for business and local economies (e.g. inspiration to start businesses, qualities for business branding, reasons to reside, stay, and move to and/or work in particular locations), though the relationship between entrepreneurship and these intangibles is difficult to capture.
A notable body of work on the creative and cultural industries (CCIs) stands out in its recognition of the key role of place in business and business in place. Seminal authors Landry and Bianchini (1995) and Florida (2002) have inspired ‘creative city policy’ around the world which sets out to attract and retain the creative industries and creative workers, underpinned by the belief in the essential recursive relationship between the CCIs and the myriad positive qualities and images of place. Indeed, the marketing of intangible qualities of place such as ‘culture’ and ‘creativity’ has become an economic regeneration strategy beyond the urban. Narratives of Cornish cultural distinctiveness, for example, have been central in Cornwall’s recent economic regeneration strategies (Hale, 2019).
The relationship between entrepreneurs and place narratives can, of course, take myriad forms. For example, emotional attachment and embeddedness in place might lead an entrepreneur into enterprise that aims to improve the image of a place (McKeevor et al., 2015), whilst some entrepreneurs might use narratives of place, or place-image, to provide legitimacy for venturing activities (Kimmitt et al., 2023). Similarly, the prevailing narratives about the suitability of places for enterprising, the capabilities of communities, the attractions, or shortcomings of locations – all feed into the relationship between entrepreneurship and aspects of place (Parkinson et al., 2017). Place images and imaginaries can transfer onto the business located within them, making those businesses more – or less – viable.
To complicate this further, place narratives operate at varying scales. They are changeable, contested, and when negative, can ignore the richness of ‘everyday entrepreneurship’ in locations (Welter and Baker, 2021), downplaying the local and social significance of those businesses. Indeed, places can be constructed as less entrepreneurial than they are, especially when dominant discourses of entrepreneurship circulate around exceptional high growth/profit, innovation, and multi-job creating forms. Such understandings of entrepreneurship can serve to hide businesses that are not driven by such goals but rather seek to provide an income for a family or provide a service or enhancement for a community (e.g. social entrepreneurship). It is important not to ignore such businesses and everyday places in entrepreneurship theories (Aldrich and Ruef, 2020; Ekinsmyth, 2011; Welter et al., 2017), but we must also be careful not to create unhelpful binaries that imagine that depleted communities or residential neighbourhoods create social enterprises and low-growth businesses, whilst vibrant city centres and business parks spawn high-growth ventures (Henderson et al., 2024). Indeed, our theories need to acknowledge that many entrepreneurs want to improve their communities – not just make profit (McKeever et al., 2015), and that there is strong value and positive placemaking in this.
Finally, explicit discussion about spatial context is especially relevant in relation to women’s entrepreneurship (McAdam, 2023). Places differ with regards to the opportunities and constraints that they afford entrepreneurs. For groups of individuals who experience further constraints by virtue of their gender, in addition to other intersectional identities, these place-based criteria are likely to be even more constraining. Travel to more favourable locations is less possible for those without access to transport, for example, and mobility is a gendered phenomenon (Cresswell and Uteng, 2016). ‘Place’ is therefore especially relevant to this group, with women’s businesses more likely to be inspired by local circumstances and need, given gender cultures and patterns of mobility (Ekinsmyth, 2011, 2013). Not surprisingly, given such an intertwining of gender, place, mobility, and entrepreneurship, gender is also a factor in EE interaction (Motoyama et al., 2021).
Each of these place-based facets is central to the account that follows.
Methods and methodology
Case study counties – Some economic context
Indicative geographical and socio-economic statistics for Devon and Cornwall.
Source: The indicative Office for National Statistics (ONS) statistics were sourced through NOMISWEB and *Gov.UK IoD2019 File 11 Upper-Tier ‘Local Authority District Summaries’- for the Index of Multiple Deprivation.
Data span the period 2019–2023. Where possible, economic data matching the research interview period are shown (but avoiding 2020 given the pandemic impact). 2023 Annual Population Survey data (release date 16 April 2024), 2023 Interdepartmental Business Register data (release date 27 September 2023).
A portrait of industrial structure based on 2019 employment figures from the UK Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES).
*‘Employment’ includes employees and the VAT-registered self-employed. There are likely to be many missing non-VAT-registered self-employed and micro-businesses in these data, potentially distorting the numbers. LQs were calculated by dividing the county percentage by the GB average percentage.
For both counties, the data mask considerable within-county variation, hiding the poverty to be found in the Camborne/Pool/Redruth, St Austell, Newquay, and Bodmin built-up areas of Cornwall. The Devon data, less aggregated because of administrative divisions, reveal some of this variation more reliably.
On most measures, Table 1 reveals socio-economic profiles at variance to (and worse than) the GB average, with Cornwall performing worse than Devon (although Plymouth and Torbay commonly provide local exceptions to this). Resident earnings are lower than the GB average, the proportion of workless households is higher, and ‘managerial, professional and associate professional and technical occupations’ (SOC codes 1–3) are underrepresented (2023). In addition, Plymouth excepted, both counties had more people in self-employment (both males and females) in 2023 than the GB average. This reflects the fact that employed jobs are often scarce, low-paid, seasonal, and/or precarious (Cornwall County Council, 2023), and for some disadvantaged individuals, self-employment is the sole option.
Table 2 represents industrial profiles that can provide some explanation for these characteristics. The sectors with the greatest share of workers are ‘retail’, ‘accommodation and food’, and ‘health’ in both counties. A measure of similarity or difference to Great Britain (GB) averages is provided by the location quotients (LQs) which were calculated to identify the industry sectors where the counties are specialised (judged as an LQ greater than 1.5) or under-specialised (an LQ of less than 0.5) relative to the GB average. Caution must be exercised as a high LQ can arise in a sector with few employees (e.g. ‘agriculture, forestry, and fishing’ are not exceptionally high in terms of worker numbers in either county). The Devon statistics here include Plymouth and Torbay. Cornwall’s profile is more abnormal than Devon’s, but in both counties, ‘agriculture, forestry, and fishing’ followed by ‘accommodation and food services’ show the highest levels of over-specialisation with ‘retail’ also high for Cornwall, and by contrast, ‘information and communication’ and ‘financial and insurance’ are under-specialisms. The distinct sectors with the highest percentages of workers are also those that thrive on insecure, ‘flexible’ employment and seasonality, and they suffer from vulnerability to economic shocks. Both counties are heavily reliant on tourism-related sectors and are popular among second-home owners, whose presence drives up house prices and, in some areas, contributes to the destabilisation of local communities (Dykes and Walmsley, 2015; Meyrick, 2021).
The temporal context for this research was that EU-funded services were shortly to suffer a severance upon leaving the European Union, an event that could impact on the long-term benefits of economic growth (Di Cataldo, 2017). Business support respondents in this research were interviewed in the context of this changing funding landscape. They were yet to know that as replacement, in June 2023, Cornwall would be allocated only £132 million for local investment (to 2025) through the UK Government’s Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) (United Kingdom Government – UKSPF allocations – (gov.uk)). This would follow a broken Government promise to match EU funding. Devon local authorities would also lose out, having received over £85 million from the EU between 2014 and 2020, but in 2023, receiving a much smaller combined £14.5 million from the UKSPF (United Kingdom Government – (gov.uk)).
Sample characteristics
This article draws upon 22 semi-structured in-depth interviews with 8 women entrepreneurs and 14 ecosystem support individuals carried out in 2019/2020. The data comprise verbatim transcripts from all Devon and Cornwall interviews, extracted from a larger group (n = 165) carried out across the English Channel counties of England and France (for an EU Interreg-funded project entitled ‘Accelerating Women’s Enterprise (AWE)’). The respondents are regarded here as ‘key informants’ (Gilchrist and Williams, 1999). The analytic approach is best described as qualitative secondary data analysis (QSDA) (Ruggiano and Perry, 2019), utilising two methods from Hinds et al. (1997): analysing overlooked themes from a parent study and using a data subset from that study. The extract sample, though not purposively aligned with this article’s inquiry, is an ideal match (Sherif, 2018), as the interviews naturally elicited stories about place and its role. Indeed, this approach arguably offers advantages over focussing specifically on place in disadvantaged entrepreneurial ecosystems, as it avoids imposing biases on respondent narratives through direct questioning. QSDA does not allow for specific theoretical or purposive sampling, or sampling saturation, as the sample cases are not purposefully chosen. The resulting approach was never-the-less well-aligned with the article’s theoretical approach (Saunders et al., 2018), one that emphasises the value of informants who each offer the particular, the partial and the personal (discussed below). There was considerable consistency in the respondents’ accounts, but this cannot be reported as theoretical or data saturation. Additional ethical considerations were considered negligible as the study entailed a difference in emphasis – rather than subject matter, to the parent study, and the author had been deeply involved in the interview, data analysis, and reporting stages of the parent study.
For the parent study, 165 semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were conducted in the UK and France. Respondents were split equally between women entrepreneurs and ecosystem stakeholders. Entrepreneurs were purposively sampled using screening questions to ensure that they had a least one additional (to gender) intersection of social, economic, or locational disadvantage (see Danho et al., 2021). Ecosystem stakeholders were identified by project partners and purposively sampled to deliver a range of organisations and geographical spread across the regions covered by the wider project. Interviews ranged from 30 minutes to 1 hour in duration, and recordings were professionally transcribed verbatim. The wider project findings were verified for accuracy by the experts on the external committee of the project.
This article’s sub-sample women entrepreneurs varied in location (rural/urban), business stage (start-up/early-stage), education level, and all lived in neighbourhoods defined as socially deprived. Their businesses included six social enterprises, a wedding business, and a beauty business, and all had received some business support and had developing business networks. The predominance of social enterprises in the Devon sample resulted from recruitment via a partner social enterprise development agency. This coloured the Devon results but did not adversely affect or bias the core questions this research sought to answer. The 14 business support providers represented the following sectors: private finance, business training and support, public education, local government, and official business membership bodies. Their activities were county-based. Together with the entrepreneurs, they provide a micro, contextual view of the start-up ecosystems for disadvantaged women in the two counties.
Theoretical approach
In accordance with the theories of place discussed above, this inquiry adopted a relational, interpretivist (Leitch et al., 2010) view of place – that is, understanding that place is not static, bounded, or unvarying and is constructed through social practice, meanings, rules, and norms operating at the hyper-local through to the global scales. In addition, acceptance of the specificity of place is paramount and foregrounded in the analytical framework. Thus, the article focuses upon the respondents’ accounts of entrepreneurship and enterprise support in place at a particular time and as such is understood to be partial and personal. Actors are understood to be both affected by place and constructors of place.
Analytical approach
The research question was exploratory, aiming to uncover the stories revealed by foregrounding spatial context in the data analysis. The findings were emergent and interpretive (Charmaz, 2014; Pratt, 2009), and the analysis process flexibly adopted a ‘staged’ design (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Gioia et al., 2013) using, at stage one, thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998) to highlight passages in the transcripts that related to the research question. This interpretivist approach used ‘methodological bricolage’ (Pratt et al., 2022) to address analytic move limitations imposed by SQDA (such as the sample’s impact on being able to strictly apply Gioia’s grounded theory approach). Despite lively debates about the inappropriate use of ‘templates’ in analyses (Gehman et al., 2018; Gioia et al., 2022; Locke et al., 2022), I present Figures 1 and 2 as models of the data structure to connote the analytic process, but there is danger in presenting the process as neat in this way (Thomas, 2021). Analyses in fact ranged back and forth across ‘stages’ to refine and re-define themes and aggregate dimensions and stay close to the original data. Following Pratt et al. (2022), the analytic moves were carefully tailored to the aims of the research and the data to be explored. Cornwall data structure. Devon data structure.
At the process start, transcripts from Devon and Cornwall were analysed separately to reflect the theoretical framing of place specificity and reveal local particularities. Using the constant comparative method to identify themes (Corbin and Strauss, 2014), similarities and differences between the counties emerged. Instead of listing these themes in the data structure diagrams (Figures 1 and 2), I’ve used indicative respondent quotes to remain closer to the source material and ‘hear’ respondents’ voices (Pratt, 2008; Pratt et al., 2022; Ryan-Flood and Gill, 2010). First-order themes/phrases were combined to form ‘second-order themes’, which were then analysed for interrelationships, refined and reduced in number. The final aggregate dimensions were derived from axial coding across both counties. The findings and discussion below focus on the second-order themes and aggregate dimensions, which are signposted in these sections by emboldened text. All themes and dimensions were both inductively and deductively derived, an iterative research process that continued during the writing of this article. Findings were cross-referenced with wider literature and sense-checked by two independent EE members (not interviewees), while the author’s personal knowledge of the counties provided additional confidence in the qualitative validity of the results.
Narratives of place and enterprise support
The following accounts focus on the socially constructed place narratives and experiences of supporting or undertaking enterprise in the two counties. Arising from individuals in particular places, they are necessarily partial. The more general lessons that can be drawn from these accounts are discussed in the final section of the article. The themes and dimensions identified in Figures 1 and 2 are directly indicated in the following narrative in italics.
‘Entrepreneurial’ Cornwall?
Like most places, Cornwall is unique. Interviewees reported it as rural, deprived, and predominantly coastal, with small towns, a dispersed population, deprived communities, low aspirations amongst youth, and limited non-seasonal job opportunities. They talked of entrepreneurial communities with embedded and strong social capital, where everyone knows business-owners and informal mentors abound. These informal advice networks operated in everyday mundane spaces (Ekinsmyth, 2013) like the village/town shop, pub, sports clubs, and interest groups. Further, interviewees reported that independent business is everywhere, from the business owners in the pub to the coffee vans in the car parks, cafes, rental properties, shops, and services thickly spread throughout the landscape, and local papers, magazines, and lamppost flyers advertising small local ventures. These everyday reminders of business possibilities underpin a local cultural orientation towards small business venturing: ‘There’s a great informal ecosystem in Cornwall ... it’s great if you’ve got other people around you and it’s that informal mentoring and advice, it’s the conversations down the pub or over the coffee’ (Official Business Membership Body).
There was however acknowledgement of the dangers of deeply embedded community and established business networks. One support agent mentioned: ‘I have to say that Cornwall is a bit like that [cliquey]’ (Official Business Membership Body).
In this micro-enterprising environment, interviewees explained that it is a local norm for both men and women to start small businesses. They argued that this normalisation of women as business owners removed the gender-role ascription (Bullough et al., 2022) stating ‘you shouldn’t do this’ in relation to women’s business start-up. County business ownership statistics, reported above, bear this observation out. Interviewees spoke of a perceived entrepreneurial spirit in the county, a vibrancy, and acceptability of business ownership as a path to making a living. This self-employment mentality appears to be born out of a general belief in Cornwall’s economic precarity and exceptionalism, as well as the short-lived tourist season. Opportunities to make money are grasped where and when they present themselves. These cultural norms were experienced by interviewees as enablers of enterprise.
On the other hand, spatial constraints and attendant business risks were acknowledged. Local topological geographies in Cornwall were referred to as potential barriers to enterprise. First, there was belief that whilst physical separation from the rest of the country had ensured a vibrant local ecosystem of business owners, this was a function in large part, of necessity – or lack of alternative opportunity. This was not only a simple function of distance from the economic core of the country but also of distances between places within Cornwall and the general dispersal of the population. The Office of National Statistics (Office for National Statistics ONS, 2024) revealed that in 2023, Cornwall was 10th out of 44 UK regions for low population density. Enterprise support respondents reported that a low and dispersed population, a large geographical area, lots of small towns and villages, significant pockets of social deprivation and unemployment, and a poor road and transport infrastructure were barriers for some potential entrepreneurs, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds or places. Place-specific business risks are considerable and require understanding and bespoke support.
Enterprise support efforts to rectify this however are complicated by this geography. Mobility and dispersion barriers make it difficult to run physical enterprise support services and events, and to achieve an even spread throughout the county. For physical events, people generally need access to a car, and even with a car, long distances up and down the county, together with traffic jams in summer, made it challenging for agencies to support people who face these and other barriers to enterprise. ‘The support that’s available – there’s been a lot in the Camborne/Pool/Redruth area, but I can guarantee, you can go to Bodmin and there will be nothing. There’ll be nothing running, and to get to Bodmin – from Bodmin to Truro, if you don’t drive, will probably take you an hour and a half, and you certainly couldn’t do it in a morning …. so yes, location is a huge barrier, a huge barrier, particularly for people in areas of deprivation’ (Official Business Membership Body).
Generous EU funding was understood amongst interviewees to be a fundamental factor in the strong Cornish entrepreneurial ecosystem for all, but especially for women entrepreneurs facing additional barriers. Received funding, often through the ESF or the ERDF, that crucially insisted on quotas for supporting women and people from deprived communities, underpinned a vibrant business support and start-up landscape. ‘We’re flooded with European funding, yeah, currently – she says “currently” ….in Cornwall, we’ve had so much money so there’s been an awful lot of support. ….. in every single project – whether that be ERDF or ESF projects – there are targets for engaging women’ (Official Business Membership Body).
Indeed, agencies reported improved results in reaching disadvantaged women when they had funding specifically earmarked to address their challenges in their neighbourhoods. With this funding they had been able to take their services ‘on the road’ to serve communities in their own spaces. This served to make events more accessible culturally (less intimidating in one’s own community spaces) as well as geographically. Support interviewees explained that this good practice depended upon funding tailored to such challenges and demographic groups. And even with adequate funding, agents discussed the difficulties of finding people to help in deprived communities and advertising their services. This was not for lack of effort as they had targeted quotas to fill to support entrepreneurs from disadvantaged social groups and communities. It took a great deal of resource, and local knowledge and contacts, to support those in greatest need.
Further, plentiful and sustained funding received across decades meant that, although working under conditions of short-term project organisation, many of the workers within the local enterprise support sector had experienced long-term employment. ‘I think, actually, the fact that we’ve had so much European funding has meant that because there were so many projects over such a long period of time, you’ve got individuals who have worked on one or then the other and then the other, who has a good network. And because it’s a relatively small populace, if you interact with one business – so us, for example – they are likely to move on to another one’ (Private Sector Training Support Provider).
As a result, they were highly experienced in supporting the kinds of people and businesses Cornwall presented, highly knowledgeable about place, very well-networked with other agents and agencies, and well-known and well-trusted by local entrepreneurs. This ecosystem of specialised, networked, support agent, and agencies (e.g. local agents met together every month – including Job Centres, support agencies, Chambers of Commerce, local FSB contacts, and local bank personnel – meant that together, they could offer a joined-up service, referring each other and knowing what each other offer. Interviewees spoke of directing people (and being directed) to the right services. Here, the specificities of place, somewhat a function of the small size of the economy and population, but certainly the plentiful and long-lasting funding and the resulting build-up of social and human capital, set the county up as a beacon of successful practice in start-up and small-business support. The high levels of trust amongst ecosystem agents came across in the interviews strongly. There was also investment in physical infrastructure. Here we see the importance of the intersection of place and social capital. ‘In Cornwall there’s great partnership working. People connect, people join. We’ve got hubs in Cornwall, the LEP has invested in start-up hubs around Cornwall where people can rent a desk to start a business up. So there’s a great lot of support’ (Local Government Organisation).
Finally, the value of business support services aimed specifically at disadvantaged entrepreneurs was highlighted repeatedly by interviewees with experience of this. Interviewees, both entrepreneur and support agents, spoke of the success of a particular agency (let’s call it ‘Enterprise’) as a ‘One-stop shop’. One key individual who had worked there for many years had clearly become an informal and lasting mentor or ‘go-to’ person for advice, long after formal support relations had finished. This individual was mentioned many times by interviewees and was key to the success of the organisation. As one entrepreneur said when asked whether she would consider seeking a business mentor: ‘I consider Lucy [pseudonym] my business mentor. Sort of in the back of my mind. I feel safe because I know that if I have a problem or something I’m not sure of, I would email her and say, “help.” But I don’t know if we are supposed to or if she offers that or anything …’ [Business Owner].
The mention of the word ‘safe’ is significant here, this enterprise support individual, with her local knowledge and longevity of employment in the sector represented ongoing safety and security to those she had supported over the years. The women entrepreneurs also reported that the women-only nature of the sessions they had attended was beneficial, as was the social inclusivity of the sessions (‘…I felt I fitted in, even with my tattoos’ – Business Owner). These bespoke sessions constituted good, place-relevant practice and were possible because of targeted funding for the support of disadvantaged groups in disadvantaged places and the consequent local knowledge of the support providers.
‘Alternative’ Devon?
The Devon-based entrepreneur respondents were all involved in social enterprise start-ups in the south of the county. Two of the support interviewees also worked on projects to support social entrepreneurs. This flavoured the Devon-based findings and draws attention in this article even more closely to disadvantaged communities. The entrepreneurs were focused upon changing lives, and most lived in, or belonged to, their communities of need. Devon is also different to Cornwall, twice the size in population and land area and, unlike Cornwall, has two large cities (Plymouth and Exeter), a string of coastal towns in the south close to Plymouth, ‘alternative’ Totnes and a rural and more locationally remote North Devon (itself with some small towns).
Words such as ‘alternative’ and ‘do-it yourself’ were strong elements of the narratives of place painted by respondents, whether involved in social enterprise or not. These interviewees didn’t speak of the county of Devon as socio-economically exceptional in the way the Cornish interviewees did – but instead expressed pride in the counter-establishment nature of their local settings. Many Devon towns have an alternative ‘vibe’ with a visual local business landscape composed of alternative shops, cafes, businesses committed to environmental sustainability, and social causes. This contributes to a local scene of small, socially minded enterprise, especially in wealthier towns such as Totnes. Such narratives and landscapes, interviewees revealed, contribute to the specificity of place, the likelihood of individuals becoming business owners, the type of businesses being started, and the vibrancy of the local enterprise ecosystem.
Geographical remoteness and dispersal were themes in the Devon interviews, particularly in the north of the county. There was less of a sense of a vibrant ecosystem in North Devon. Instead, the dispersed nature of the population was claimed to be a key factor in business networking and disadvantage. One enterprise support interviewee from North Devon felt that there was a lack of local success in enterprise, and thus potentially, less of a pipeline: ‘I would guess in a larger city somewhere like Bristol I would say there’s going to be the path from disadvantage to success will have been beaten more times, reversed more times than it might be down here in North Devon let’s say. I don’t know’ (Private Finance Sector).
In the more urban South Devon, there are some highly impoverished communities with people within them looking to solve some of their community problems. As a member of the Chamber of Commerce remarked, ‘social entrepreneurialism is significant within Devon’. Indeed, in 2013, Plymouth became the UK’s first ‘Social Enterprise City’, a badge recognising its status as a hotspot for social enterprise. Plymouth City Council and the Devon-based universities had driven this initiative. Since 2013, it has been estimated that this badge has brought in more than £10 million of social investment for the city (Plymouth Social Enterprise Network, 2023). The resulting social enterprise network has been able to deliver place-specific advice and signposting for social enterprise support: ‘So, if you take the social enterprise network, for example, they’re already working very much within the communities – the deprived communities – [00:28:00] anyway, so they’ve already got members in those communities. So they’ve got access to talking to people …’ (Private Sector Training Support Provider).
In this example, we witness how individuals, business support providers, and local policy makers affect the nature, funding, and narratives of place.
There was less talk from the Devon respondents about EU money, Devon having received far less funding than Cornwall under these schemes. There was much talk, however, about individual and local agency, and networks of individuals determined to change things. This was one of the predominant narratives of place. Enterprise training specifically for social enterprise was highly valued by entrepreneurs and other ecosystem members. In discussions, the difference between conventional business and social enterprise was a common theme, including the fact that social enterprise was felt to be more difficult to succeed in, and bespoke training for the latter was felt necessary and was well-received.
Enterprise support interviewees explained that bespoke training wasn’t possible without adequate funding, and in particular, funding that recognises that social entrepreneurs are more likely to have additional barriers to enterprise themselves as they often come from the groups they are seeking to serve. Entrepreneur-group interviewees all had caring responsibilities, some for disabled children or elderly relatives, some had illnesses or disabilities themselves, or came from impoverished communities and circumstances. They had experienced some good support, in particular highlighting their appreciation of women-only courses, funded childcare while they attended training courses, reimbursed travel costs to events, the varying location of training courses and the neutral (unintimidating and accessible) spaces chosen for the training sessions (such as libraries and community spaces). Again, coming through very strongly was that the entrepreneurs in this sample were less confident engaging with the conventional ecosystem. Having additional barriers (in addition to gender – e.g. health, class, educational, caring responsibilities, and benefit receipt) that placed them far from the image of the typical entrepreneur, learning in a local community space with people like themselves enabled a relaxation of any unhelpful ‘imposter syndrome’ feelings. An important element was (the lack of) advertising and signposting to suitable services. As one social entrepreneur with a full-time carer role for a disabled child reflected (very time-constrained for course attendance): ‘…it’s OK having the courses out there, but how do I know which ones is right for me? There’s nothing there to say “this is ideal for a woman starting up her own business.” I don’t want to go and sit in a room full of men, because it is intimidating, women have this whole “I should be a mother …thing” … and you’ve got a million other priorities’ [Business Owner].
The limitations and shortfalls of place-based, but top-down, funding schemes and initiatives were discussed by both service providers and entrepreneurs. Whilst EU and Government place-based enterprise policy aimed to deliver funds to places in need, the nature of the funding was not always what was needed ‘on the ground’. Thus, one service provider whose agency had been successful in attracting EU funding remarked: ‘Every funder has a new shiny programme that they’re pushing out and people in the sector try and sort of make things work to be able to access that support and that funding, and I include us in that. I mean we are running increasingly as agents; we’re running programmes for funders. ...... I mean XX [a named funding stream] has got specific constraints, requirements, expectations - which are based around the funding stream, they’re not necessarily based around the needs on the ground’ (Private Sector Training Support Provider).
In a similar vein, this interviewee criticised the lack of fit in enterprise support policy aims and the aims and needs of the businesses it was supporting: ‘We did have the Localism Act here in this country … they have only limited impact if some of the larger systems aren’t changed [he mentioned taxation, social benefits]. So big society capital still operates like a traditional finance provider. It wants a return on its investment. It wants a financial return; it wants it in a certain time frame’ (Private Sector Training Support Provider).
The short-term, project-based nature of funding streams was also a concern. Limited funding horizons meant that agents did not know whether they would be able to sustain services or good practice. Employees could not be promised long-term contracts, leading to high staff turnover and loss of local experience, a circumstance at variance to the Cornwall accounts. At the time of interviewing (2019/2020), the implications of Brexit were a concern for most service providers: ‘Our Core budget is £XX - actual spend is £X million [3.5% of actual spend is core] - so we need to raise this money from grants and funders - EU, ERDF etc. We’re bidding for European funds now which will take us through to 2023 - after that I don’t know where that money is going to come from...’ (Private Sector Training Support Provider).
Locally specific social capital was key. The research uncovered a sub-ecosystem for co-operatives and social enterprises, as well as investors who specialised in financing Devon social enterprises – these bespoke networks were valued, and they underpinned the vibrant local social enterprise scene. Given the predominance of social enterprise in some areas of the county, mentors with SE experience and role-models abounded locally. Acting as a conduit and symbol for this network, the SE support agency played a key role locally. Having been long-established, and having some long-term employees, it spearheaded a network of ex-students, advisors, and trustees who were key ecosystem players. Whilst links to national-level organisations were important to the ecosystem, it was the local embeddedness, place-specific knowledge, and commitment to Devon that formed the bedrock of this buoyant SE community. This place-based ‘capital’ was able to overcome some of the limitations of funding and policy discussed above, sometimes by managing to implement the requirements of funding streams against the odds. This included managing to advertise programmes to the right groups in the right places. This was felt to be vital. For example, one interviewee remarked: ‘… so I think the real issue from a policy and structural perspective is about that visibility. I think there are opportunities there and there is funding coming through. I don’t think it’s well-publicised, I don’t think we’re getting to the right people who really want to know about how to start a business’ (Official Business Membership Body).
For those agents with length of experience in the region, knowledge of place enabled them to go into deprived communities, raise the visibility of their programmes, and locate their courses in their community spaces. This increased accessibility, feelings of belonging, and relevance.
Discussion
The key findings of this article can be summarised around five main points, which together address the importance of place, funding, and forms of enterprise support.
First, the entrepreneurialism and significance of place was woven through the narratives of interviewees in both Devon and Cornwall. Respondents from both counties were acutely aware of their local circumstances, challenges, and opportunities. In line with other research findings (McKeevor, 2015), these circumstances and characteristics were found to be a source of entrepreneurialism, identity, attachment, and pride as well as a spur to place-sensitive action. They had acted as an impetus to business start-up and, where funding was available, place-bespoke business support. Local knowledge about place arose from experience of living in these counties, which consolidated ‘sense of place’ and culturally produced ‘place-narratives’. As Parkinson et al. (2017) also found, local place narratives consolidated commitment to place which in turn led to business start-ups and community action. The nature of place attachment and the narratives of place were place specific, different between counties but also differing within counties. Whilst place is therefore all important to entrepreneurship, it is also difficult to define and impossible to bound (Amin, 2004). For both counties, the local cultures and economic history of place (agriculture, fishing, and mining (Cornwall)) had contributed to sense of place, as had discourses of hardship and remoteness. Whilst the sample was small, such discourses of struggle and hardship had clearly contributed to place commitment, and resulting entrepreneurship, a finding in common with Johnstone and Lionais (2004). This demonstrates that understanding entrepreneurial action and opportunity requires deep, rather than shallow, spatial contextualisation.
Second, place is also key for entrepreneurial ecosystems, networks, and social capital. In these counties, social capital for business start-up is embedded in communities, and these communities are often partially (perhaps sometimes wholly) place based. Elements of this social capital arise organically but a strong funded enterprise support ecosystem can also be embedded in place but requires adequate, long-range funding, that is geared to local need. Continuity of existence of enterprise support agencies and long-term employment of enterprise support agents enables the development of networks of local experts and relationships between agencies, agents, and business owners. Continuity also ensures personal links into all communities, but especially deprived communities, which are important to ensure services are reaching need. This place-embedded social capital leads to good practice, trust, and reciprocity amongst actors. Cornwall, and to an extent Devon, has benefitted from sustained funding from the EU to address local need arising from remoteness and deprivation. While agencies have needed to bid for short-term funding in cycles, their success in the bidding process was assured enough to employ support staff across multiple ‘projects’. Without successive funding, ‘project organisation’ (Ekinsmyth, 2002) arising from funding bids leads to minimal institutional thickness, memory, and thin networks. Unfortunately, much enterprise support is organised in this way and consequently fails to meet local need adequately. The Cornwall experience highlighted in this article reveals how sustainable institutional thickness, local expertise, and good practice in the enterprise support landscape results from sustained and adequate funding.
Third, disadvantaged, dispersed, remote regions, and communities can spawn unusual business solutions (Johnstone and Lionais, 2004) but their unique problems need solutions which can best be found by a bottom-up approach – top-down approaches are not so useful. This is because policy needs to be place-specific, not just place-based. Top-down funding streams from Government are generally place-applied but are not often place-specific. According to findings of this article, they often therefore miss the mark, incorporating conditions that prevent agencies from delivering services that meet local need as well as they might. Issues of scale complicate policy interventions with a diversity of support need existing in any geographical territory. A solution is for Governments to develop policy with local experts, through consultation and co-production, but also, for funding to incorporate flexibility in their conditions for agents to respond to local need.
Fourth, bespoke training was identified as good practice by all interviewees, but agencies often need to work hard to reach these groups in disadvantaged places. The good practice identified in this research included one-stop shops with signposting to services, long-term relationship and trust building, reaching out to disadvantaged communities by travelling to them and locating training events within them, providing bespoke sessions for women, providing funded childcare on-site at training events, and reimbursing travel costs for event attendance. Many of these relied upon the local knowledge, experience, and networks of agents undertaking this work. All of this required plentiful funding and a commitment to the widening of access to entrepreneurship. The prime consideration of the business owners interviewed was being made to feel they belonged in the training sessions and that they had the potential to be successful in their ventures. The potential for business network cliques to arise was also something that needed to be controlled. Business owner interviewees’ primary constraints were time and the money necessary to attend the events, made harder when travel distance was greater.
Finally, place is fundamental to gender relations and roles (Massey, 2013; McAdam 2023). Whilst this article has not focussed upon gender in detail, Cornwall interviewees discussed an accepted norm of women as business owners in the county, and regional statistics support this revealing a smaller gender gap between women and men business owners in Cornwall than Devon or the national average. Whilst necessity entrepreneurship may account for a lot of this, further research on local variation and who becomes an entrepreneur, and why, would pay dividends for understanding the interwoven role of gender and place in entrepreneurship. In addition, all interviewees asserted the value of bespoke business support for women and intersecting socially disadvantaged groups.
Concluding comments, implications, and future research directions
This article offers a way to conceptualise ‘place’ and centre spatial context in theories of entrepreneurship. Taking a relational view of place (i.e. understanding that place is defined by its relationships within and without), it has shown that spatial and political relationships to the national and international levels, and local specificities (including place narratives, socio-economic characteristics and histories, sense of place, social networks, embeddedness, gender-cultures, and bespoke place-specific funding and support policy), all intersect to create unique landscapes of entrepreneurial ecosystems, opportunity, and endeavour across space. Both Devon and Cornwall highlighted the critical role of long-term, sustained funding in fostering institutional thickness, developing sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems, and retaining local expertise in enterprise support. Cornwall demonstrated this with notable clarity, having benefitted from substantial funding throughout the 2000s and 2010s. Both also revealed the importance of local expertise in deciding how monies should be spent, casting doubt upon top-down policy from places beyond, devised at national and international scales. They highlighted the critical role of success in national and international funding and status bids. Plymouth underscored the significance of local consortia in securing status (e.g. Social Enterprise City), which contributes to local place narratives and bolsters entrepreneurial activity. Both counties revealed the power of place narratives in inspiring and legitimising entrepreneurship. All interviewees recognised the value of enterprise support for disadvantaged groups in disadvantaged places and asserted their attachment to their unique places.
Implications and recommendations
The policy implications of this study emphasise the need for place-specific and flexible approaches to support entrepreneurship and self-employment in remote and disadvantaged regions. Where paid work is scarce, insecure, or impossibly out of reach, entrepreneurial communities can change lives and places. Policies should prioritise long-term, sustainable funding tailored to local needs to strengthen entrepreneurial ecosystems, social capital, and institutional networks. Instead of top-down, generalised approaches, governments should adopt bottom-up strategies, engaging local EE support experts and communities in policy design and implementation through consultation and co-production.
Enterprise support programs should focus on accessibility and inclusivity by providing outreach to marginalised groups, offering bespoke training, addressing barriers like childcare and travel costs, and fostering a sense of belonging among participants, whilst being cognisant of their social responsibility not to encourage people down unsustainable business/employment paths. Policy should account for gender dynamics by supporting efforts to reduce gender disparities in entrepreneurship, recognising the interplay between place and gender in shaping entrepreneurial opportunities. As this work is difficult, tailored funding is a requirement. The budgets, mechanisms, and accountability for this need national coordination, as leaving funding decisions to devolved authorities with little money is unlikely to result in this expensive work. Crucially, to avoid fragmentation and inefficiency, funding cycles should support continuity in enterprise support agencies and staff, enabling the development of strong networks of agencies, institutional memory, key trusted individuals, and best practices.
The emplaced experiences of the participants in this study provide valuable insights into the recursive relationship between agents, entrepreneurship, and place, but the study is necessarily partial. Further studies of this nature, using carefully selected and varying key cases, would offer further insights into general relationships through corroboration and contradiction. Place-based research has for the most part focussed its sights on entrepreneurial ecosystems in the most successful places (Theodoraki et al., 2023) and largest cities, rather than the less successful rural hinterlands. In addition, the difficulties of bounding place mean that theorising spatial context requires the problematisation of its core concepts (locale, space, region, scale), potentially undermining claims to its own validity. Indeed, it is impossible to paint a detailed portrait of place at the scale of the UK county. This means that further, granular, relational studies of diverse places at finer geographic scales are needed to appreciate the full and varied extent of the agentic role of place, and placemaking, in entrepreneurship.
Supplemental material
Supplemental Material - Entrepreneurial ecosystems in disadvantaged places: Spatial context, ‘place’, and policy
Supplemental Material for Entrepreneurial ecosystems in disadvantaged places: Spatial context, ‘place’, and policy by Carol Ekinsmyth in Local Economy
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the contributors to the parent ‘Accelerating Women’s Enterprise’ study, including my colleagues on the research teams and our delivery partners. In particular, the Portsmouth research team comprising Zoe Dann, David Pickernell, Karen Johnston, Amy Doyle, and Georgiana Busoi who were involved in the management, design, and conduct of the UK-based interviews. I would also like to thank the ISBE Gender and Entrepreneurship Track participants, particularly Dr Lorna Treanor, for their encouragement with this paper when first presented at ISBE 2023. Finally, my thanks to Local Economy’s anonymous reviewers and Associate Editor, Nicholas Wise, for their insightful and constructive comments in the development of this article.
Ethical considerations
The Faculty of Business and Law Ethics Review Committee at the University of Portsmouth approved the interviews for the parent study from which the data for this study was drawn (approval BAL/2019/16/PICKERNELL in 2019).
Consent to participate
Respondents gave written consent before starting interviews.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The parent study was funded through the Accelerating Women’s Enterprise (AWE) project supported by the European Commission (European Union, Interreg France (Channel Marche) England Programme).
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability Statement
The data from this project will not be made publicly available as agreed at the ethical approval stage
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References
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