A Study on the Evolution Characteristics and Key Drivers of Urban Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: From the Perspective of Complexity Science

Entrepreneurial activity is a typical complex social system with significant regional heterogeneity. Most of the existing studies focus on explaining a certain aspect of entrepreneurial activities or exploring the extent to which regional entrepreneurial activities promote regional economic growth. However, examining regional entrepreneurial activities from a systematic rather than fragmented perspective may be able to reflect their internal and external quality more comprehensively and accurately. The purpose of this paper is to study the key factors affecting the quality of entrepreneurial activities in large Chinese cities based on the theories of "Entrepreneurial Ecosystem" and "Complexity System", and put forward corresponding recommendation on policy design and policy implementation. Based on a systematic review of studies on city-level entrepreneurial ecosystems and the application of complexity science in entrepreneurial research, The Urban Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Index (UEEI) system is constructed, which consists of three dimensions of synergy, emergence and phase change, 10 first-level indicators and 40 second-level indicators. The cross-section data of 2018 are used to make quantitative analysis on China's top ten quasi-first-tier cities such as Wuhan and Chengdu. The results show that the urban entrepreneurial ecosystem is characterized by coordination, emergence and phase transformation, and the more balanced the three characteristics are, the higher the quality of the urban entrepreneurial ecosystem will be. In terms of specific indicators, employment, technological innovation and education are the key order parameters, and the performance of a key order parameter is particularly excellent, which is a common characteristic of high-quality urban entrepreneurial ecosystem.