Entrepreneurial ecosystem playbooks: configurations of routines and resourcing sustainable entrepreneurship

This article explores how playbooks in entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) have become more accessible for sustainable entrepreneurship. We draw on evolutionary economics literature to argue that EE playbooks are a partially codified configuration of individual routines of different EE actors, guiding how resources are assembled and made accessible to entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs who use place-based EE playbooks allocate resources more effectively than those who do not. We identify five key mechanisms that make EE playbooks more accessible for sustainable entrepreneurs: changing entrepreneurial role identities, goal diversity, openness to outsiders, malleability of the dominant knowledge regime, and entrepreneurial culture. While these mechanisms individually alter the capacity of the EE to support sustainable entrepreneurship, an EE playbook logic highlights how these changes jointly shape this transition. Overall, this study conceptualises EE playbooks as ecosystem-level routines that explain how resources are assembled within EEs and thus impact the sustainability transitions of EEs.