Knowledge spillovers, entrepreneurial ecosystems and the geography of high growth firms redux

Jun Du; Michail Karoglou; Anastasia Ri; Lin Zhang

doi:10.1007/s10961-025-10210-0

Knowledge spillovers, entrepreneurial ecosystems and the geography of high growth firms redux

Jun Du, Michail Karoglou, Anastasia Ri^*, Lin Zhang

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

High-growth firms (HGFs) exist across most regions, yet some UK local authority districts (LADs) consistently outperform others in their prevalence. This study investigates why, focusing on knowledge spillovers and entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE) as drivers of HGF incidence. Replicating and extending Fotopoulos (2023), we analyse longitudinal data from 2009 to 2021, refining methods to address autocorrelation biases from overlapping periods. Our findings confirm persistent inter-regional differences in HGFs incidence rates, driven by robust human capital, creative industries, and business services, though evidence for knowledge spillovers remains weak, meriting further exploration. By offering longitudinal evidence from a high-quality EE context, we enrich debates on regional HGF persistence and the EE framework’s utility, informing policies aiming to foster productive entrepreneurship.

Original language	English
Number of pages	64
Journal	The Journal of Technology Transfer
Early online date	15 May 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-025-10210-0
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 15 May 2025

Bibliographical note

Copyright © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Data Access Statement

Data used in the analysis is publicly available, with the sources detailed in Table 6 in Appendix.

Keywords

Entrepreneurial ecosystems
High growth firms
Knowledge spillovers
Persistence
Regional development

Access to Document

10.1007/s10961-025-10210-0Licence: CC BY 4.0

Knowledge spillovers, entrepreneurial ecosystems and the geography of high growth firms redux
Copyright © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Final published version, 4.39 MBLicence: CC BY 4.0

Cite this

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abstract = "High-growth firms (HGFs) exist across most regions, yet some UK local authority districts (LADs) consistently outperform others in their prevalence. This study investigates why, focusing on knowledge spillovers and entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE) as drivers of HGF incidence. Replicating and extending Fotopoulos (2023), we analyse longitudinal data from 2009 to 2021, refining methods to address autocorrelation biases from overlapping periods. Our findings confirm persistent inter-regional differences in HGFs incidence rates, driven by robust human capital, creative industries, and business services, though evidence for knowledge spillovers remains weak, meriting further exploration. By offering longitudinal evidence from a high-quality EE context, we enrich debates on regional HGF persistence and the EE framework{\textquoteright}s utility, informing policies aiming to foster productive entrepreneurship.",

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N2 - High-growth firms (HGFs) exist across most regions, yet some UK local authority districts (LADs) consistently outperform others in their prevalence. This study investigates why, focusing on knowledge spillovers and entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE) as drivers of HGF incidence. Replicating and extending Fotopoulos (2023), we analyse longitudinal data from 2009 to 2021, refining methods to address autocorrelation biases from overlapping periods. Our findings confirm persistent inter-regional differences in HGFs incidence rates, driven by robust human capital, creative industries, and business services, though evidence for knowledge spillovers remains weak, meriting further exploration. By offering longitudinal evidence from a high-quality EE context, we enrich debates on regional HGF persistence and the EE framework’s utility, informing policies aiming to foster productive entrepreneurship.

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Knowledge spillovers, entrepreneurial ecosystems and the geography of high growth firms redux

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Data Access Statement

Keywords

Access to Document

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Cite this