Anchor entrepreneurs as microfoundational agents of regional industry emergence: the case of Scotland’s space industry

Recent work in evolutionary economic geography emphasises the agency of organisations to create new regional development paths. However, the agency of individual entrepreneurs to evoke regional industry emergence has been largely overlooked. Adopting microfoundations theory to build on the concept of anchor entrepreneurship from policy research, we explore how individual entrepreneurs can help catalyse new regional industries. We advance microfoundational theorisations in the literature by drawing empirical insights from a case study of Scotland’s space industry (2002–23) to illuminate how entrepreneurial processes can trigger structural changes in established regional innovation systems to facilitate regional industry emergence. Read the transcript © 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group