Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography Institute News
Presentations at the Summer Conference of the Society for Regional Research

Presentations at the Summer Conference of the Society for Regional Research

© L. Stolz, 2021

From 01-02 July 2021 the 11th Summer Conference of the Society for Regional Research took place virtually.

The Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography was involved with two presentations. Lennard Stolz and Martin Queißner (Ruhr-University Bochum) presented first results of their meta-analysis on the determinants of start-up activities. The study is the first to apply this methodology to the topic, thus synthesizing the results of decades of research and deriving stylized facts and new insights. By including the spatial level of investigation of the respective studies in the meta-analysis, it is also shown that the individual determinants have different effects at different spatial levels of observation (local, regional, national). The determinants were also assigned to the elements of Stam's (2015) Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Framework. Among other findings, the results show that the element "Networks" significantly influences Entrepreneurial Activity at the local level with a high effect size. This supports the thesis of the high importance of local networks in Entrepreneurial Ecosystems.

In the second presentation, Lennard Stolz and Rolf Sternberg discussed the current state of their research on the role of start-up competitions in Entrepreneurial Ecosystems. The core of the presentation was the results of a qualitative study with participants of two start-up competitions in Germany. The interview data were analyzed using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, which allows for a logical reduction of different combinations of conditions for the outcome (here experienced learning effects). A key finding is that the competitions produce high learning effects, especially for participants without previous start-up experience.