Entrepreneurial ecosystems’ transition to sustainability: exploring the demand for green talents in 20 global cities

This paper contributes to the study of entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) and their transition to sustainability by investigating their demand for Green Talents as a fundamental resource and an enabling factor for this shift. Scholars have previously employed the concept of EEs to account for the contextual, evolutionary, and nonlinear features of entrepreneurship in countries, regions, and cities. There, Talents constitute one of the fundamental sources for growth and innovation, specifically in the transition to more sustainable practices for which individual businesses and EEs alike need to recruit workers possessing specific technical and analytical skills and knowledge, often named "Green Talents". Despite this relevance, the demand for Green Talents in city EEs has never been investigated. To fill this gap, the present explorative paper committed to assess the demand for Green Talents in city EEs, reveal recurring patterns, and identify potential predicting factors. Drawing on the Quadruple/Quintuple Helix Framework, on multiple streams in economics and management, and on Startup Genome 2022 List of city ecosystems, this work identified 20 EEs hosting the most advanced communities of entrepreneurs in the world. Then, from these ecosystems it collected almost 3.5 million OJVs published in the month of November 2022, and quantitatively analyzed them with statistical techniques. It found that the percentage of OJVs dedicated to Green Talents remains relatively low at 1.53% on average, but with major differences between industrial sectors and job functions. Specifically, heavy and environmentally impactful sectors such as Construction, Mining and oil, and Utilities are investing much in recruiting Green Talents to implement more sustainable practices. Additionally, local EE factors appear to influence the demand for Green Talents via OJVs, whether negatively such as EE Performance and green 2 Talent availability, or positively such as availability of green Knowledge, Funding, or EE Focus on green enterprises. These last results confirm the importance of context and non-linear dynamics for entrepreneurship at the city level. Accordingly, this preliminary work contributes to the literature with first empirical results on the demand for Green Talents in EEs, and further confirms existing theories on ecosystem entrepreneurship at the city level. Moreover, this data could be used to benchmark cities and sectors or support data-driven policies for the acquisition of Green Talents and favor EE synergies, ultimately fostering the transition of EEs to sustainability.