Ouafa Oualfi, Stratégie et écosystème entrepreneurial des incubateurs académiques en Europe, une approche configurationnelle

Defended on 15-12-2022

Supervised by Karim Messeghem

This thesis lies at the intersection of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and the strategy of academic incubators. It contributes to the emergence of a new stream of research that takes a holistic approach to better understand entrepreneurial actors in relation to their contexts and to entrepreneurial dynamics. More specifically, its objective is to gain a better understanding of the strategies of academic incubators within the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This thesis by publication is structured around three articles and draws on a quantitative methodology, through a bibliometric study, and a qualitative methodology, through an exploratory qualitative study and a single case study. The bibliometric study covered the entrepreneurial ecosystem literature over the period from 2011 to 202. The exploratory qualitative study was conducted with 28 academic incubators in 4 European countries (Italy, France, Ireland and England). This research was extended by a single case study of an academic incubator in France. Our work makes a valuable contribution to the ecosystem literature by introducing a configurational perspective. It extends the analysis of incubators as sub-ecosystems, thereby better accounting for the interactions that academic incubator ecosystems manage to develop with the entrepreneurial ecosystem as a whole. The research identifies several types of academic incubators, notably according to their ecosystemic attributes. Until now, these incubators had been reduced to a single type. Implications and recommendations are put forward, leading in particular to the development of an ecosystemic vision of the actors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.