Abstract:

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are widely acknowledged as crucial to promoting regional competitive advantage and local development. Despite this discussion, higher education institutions (HEIs) have an undeniable role in the promotion of regional ecosystems, mainly through the support of academic/students entrepreneurship and the promotion of entrepreneurial competences. A key stakeholder of HEIs are the student-led organizations, which are initiatives promoted and managed exclusively by students. This paper discusses the impact of junior enterprises (JEs) in the quality conditions of regional ecosystems. A JE is a non-profit student-led organization, created and managed exclusively by higher education undergraduate and postgraduate students, which provides specialized services to companies, institutions, and society, at the same time, that promotes the development of its members’ knowledge and skills base. A quantitative analysis was performed based on primary data gathered from 44 JEs and secondary data collected from the Regional Innovation Index and the Regional Ecosystem Scoreboard of the European Commission. The findings of this study suggest that JEs’ performance is related to the quality conditions of regional ecosystems, mainly to the entrepreneurial culture, entrepreneurial motivation, business and entrepreneurship education, availability of technical and design/creative skills in the private sector, availability of individuals with high levels of E-skills and tertiary education, as well as employment in knowledge-intensive services. Moreover, the development performance is a predictor of the skills available on the ecosystem, as well as the business and entrepreneurship education. These findings have implications for both higher education management and public policy since it highlights the importance of students-led organizations as key actors in regional development.

Keywords:

Junior enterprise, entrepreneurship, higher education, student-led organizations, regional development, entrepreneurial ecosystem.