The Cultural Governance of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

Social attributes refer broadly to resources and support accessed through the social networks of entrepreneurs, investors, workers, or advisors. Social networks themselves have long been acknowledged as critical for successful entrepreneurship, as entrepreneurs use their social networks and capital to gather knowledge about the market place and new technologies, acquire resources such as investment capital and access to markets (Greve and Salaff 2003; Nijkamp 2003; Patel and Conklin, 2009). Networks tend to be locally focused with the densest and strongest ties developed within the entrepreneur’s home region (Rutten et al., 2010). Networks of investors, ranging from friends and family to more organized angel investors and venture capitalists, are key to enabling entrepreneurial growth within a region because investors typically use their own social networks to identify and appraise new investment opportunities (Shane and Cable, 2002). This dependence on networks creates a concentrated geography of financial investment, with angels and venture capitalists tending to invest in the regions in which they are located (Christienson 2007).

Mentors also play a central role in supporting younger entrepreneurs by providing guidance and helping them avoid many of the common pitfalls associated with starting and growing a new firm (Ozgen and Baron, 2007; Bosma et al., 2012). The presence of mentors helps to increase the rate of new firm formation within regions and reduce rates of firm failure (Lafuente et al., 2007). Much like investors, mentors connect with entrepreneurs through their personal networks, meaning they are more likely to advise local entrepreneurs than those outside their home region. Feldman and Zoller (2012, see also Feldman 2014) emphasize the importance of ‘dealmakers,’ actors with high levels of social capital and connections that actively build strong networks within regions and assist entrepreneurs connect with the network-based resources they need to grow. The importance of a skilled workforce in entrepreneurship-based regional economies is well documented (Feldman, 2001; Malecki, 2009; Audrestch et al., 2011). This includes both technical workers as well as experienced managers who can join the boards of startups and help them grow (World Economic Forum, 2013). However, the mere presence of these employees is not enough: they must have a similar tolerance for risk as entrepreneurs in order for them to thrive in jobs characterized by little job security, longer work hours, and lower initial pay. Entrepreneurs face increased challenges in regions where workers are unaccustomed to the unique expectations of working at startups (Spigel, 2011).

The material attributes of an ecosystem are those with a tangible presence. This presence can be a physical location, such as with universities or infrastructure, or formalized rules like entrepreneurial policies and well-regulated markets. Universities are one of the most discussed attributes of ecosystems, prized for their ability to generate new knowledge, spin-off firms and to train highly skilled workers and entrepreneurs (Krichhoff et al., 2007). Academic entrepreneurs hold the promise of revolutionizing markets by commercializing laboratory innovations, though the most important functions of universities is in training the next generation of technologists, scientists, and entrepreneurs (Wolfe, 2005) Support services, both in the form of accounting, legal, and marketing firms specializing in the needs of startups and who provide discounts or service-for-equity schemes as well as publicly-funded entrepreneurial support organizations and incubation facilities, supply ancillary services to startups and help entrepreneurs navigate the complex commercial challenges of starting, growing, and exiting small, innovative firms (Kenney and Patton, 2005; Patton and Kenney, 2005; Totterman and Stern, 2005). While the role of physical infrastructure in entrepreneurial ecosystems is less studied than other attributes, the presence of sufficient office space, telecommunications facilities, and transportation connections provide space for firms to grow and tap into global markets (Neck et al., 2010; Audrestch et al. 2011; Mack and Rey, 2014). Polices and markets are less ‘material’ in the sense that they do not have a physical location, but instead materialize through the rules and regulations enacted through state power. Policies represent laws and directives that create publicly funded support programs designed to encourage entrepreneurship through tax benefits, investment of public funds, or reductions in bureaucratic regulation (Huggins and Williams, 2011). Open markets refer both to the lack of legal barriers to opening a firm as well as the presence of sufficient economic opportunities to support multiple entrepreneurial endeavours (Spilling, 1996; World Economic Forum, 2013).

The cultural, social, and material attributes of an ecosystem do not exist in isolation; rather they develop and work in concert with one another. Cultural attributes can be seen as the ‘foundation’ of an ecosystem because they influence the basic attitudes and outlooks towards entrepreneurship. Actors’ underlying beliefs about the legitimacy of entrepreneurship as a career choice and the wider social status of entrepreneurship within the community affect their desire to engage in venture creation or their willingness to support the entrepreneurial endeavours of others (Liñan et al., 2011; Spigel, 2013). By normalizing support for entrepreneurship within the larger community an ecosystem’s cultural attributes create a context through which supportive social attributes can emerge. Supportive cultural values can encourage nascent entrepreneurs to start a firm, successful entrepreneurs and experienced business people to dedicate time towards networking and mentoring, skilled workers to join startups, and high net-worth individuals to consider investing in them. This contributes to the formation of denser and richer networks between entrepreneurs, investors, and advisors. The legitimation of entrepreneurship within the local culture generates a context in which the social attributes of an ecosystem can emerge and flourish.

The presence of thriving social elements in an ecosystem foster a context in which the material attributes can have a significant positive impact on the entrepreneurship process. Entrepreneurship, innovation and technology transfer policies frequently fail without suitable social institutions within the wider community to support them (Hughes, 2007). Policies designed to encourage entrepreneurship through training, public funding, or incubators struggle in the absence of an underlying community of other entrepreneurs, advisors, and workers to support these new programs and the new ventures they create. Similarly, it is difficult to develop networks of firms that provide support services for startups in the absence of supportive cultural and social attributes that encourage non-entrepreneurs to help smaller ventures. The presence of thriving material ecosystem attributes therefore depend on strong social attributes like networks of entrepreneurs, investors, and workers, which in turn require a preexisting supportive culture to develop.

However, the relationship between attributes in an ecosystem is not necessarily a hierarchy of ‘lower’ elements supporting ‘higher’ ones. The development and success of material attributes can reinforce social attributes, in turn strengthening the underlying cultural attributes (see Figure 1). Economic development agencies or entrepreneurial support organizations can play an important role in fostering networks of entrepreneurs and raising the profile of successful local startups. This encourages new actors to engage in networking activities, increasing the amount of financial, technical, and mentorship resources within local social networks. Strong sets of social attributes such as networks, mentors, and investment capital within a region then help to reinforce and reproduce the ecosystem’s pre-existing culture by normalizing these practices and creating new stories of successful entrepreneurship that enter in the region’s history.

The relationships between the three types of attributes help distinguish strong ‘munificent’ entrepreneurial ecosystem from weaker ‘arid’ ecosystems. Munificent ecosystems feature supportive feedback loops between the three categories of attributes, with each strengthening and reproducing the others. This helps to develop a resilient entrepreneurial economy that can respond to external shocks and internal economic and social changes. Thus, ecosystems are not defined by their current high or low rates of entrepreneurial activity but rather the extent to which they possess a self-sustaining economic, social, and cultural environment that promotes entrepreneurship over the long term. While arid ecosystems can have high rates of startup activity, the lack of connections between the ecosystem’s attributes means that the regional economy is vulnerable to shocks like the loss of a major employer or market.

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are more than regions with high rates of innovative or growth oriented entrepreneurship. They are complex systems which encourage particular activities such as entrepreneurship, risk taking, investment, and networking and which are reproduced by both the conscious efforts of dealmakers and policy officials as well as through the daily activities of entrepreneurs, workers, and investors. Understanding the influence of entrepreneurial ecosystems on regional economic trajectories therefore requires an examination of how these attributes form, evolve, and influence both one another as well as the actions of entrepreneurial actors.

4. ENTREPRENEURIAL ECOSYSTEMS IN CALGARY AND WATERLOO, CANADA

The study of entrepreneurial ecosystems, and of entrepreneurial geographies more generally, is bifurcated between quantitative methodologies which seek to identify beneficial entrepreneurial environments amongst a large number of regions (e.g. Feldman and Zoller, 2012; Qian et al., 2013) and qualitative studies that attempt to examine the underlying processes that underlie particular ecosystems (e.g. Aoyama, 2009). While both perspectives are necessary, case study based approaches are well suited to study the complex array of localized factors that constitute an ecosystem. The goal of such studies is to use the experiences of actors within an ecosystem to understand how their entrepreneurial practices and outlooks are affected by the dynamics of the ecosystem and how these practices and outlooks in turn have affected how the ecosystem functions. A comparative approach highlights features within particular ecosystems in order to better show which are unique to the region and which are more standardized parts of the entrepreneurship phenomena and Schumpeterian innovative capitalism. The present study adopts Peron and Ram’s (2004) ‘multiple stories milieu’ approach in order to explore how entrepreneurial actors develop their practices within their larger regional contexts and how this affects the structure of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Table 2: Demographic and Economic Data for Waterloo and Calgary

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 71 technology entrepreneurs, investors, and economic development officials between 2010 and 2012 (see Table 3). Interviews focused on respondents’ views of their region’s entrepreneurial community and how it has affected the practices they used to start, run, and grow new ventures. In order to avoid a bias towards the founders of larger and more successful startups, a random pool of technology firms younger than 20 years old was constructed using Scotts Business Directory, a Canadian firm directory.¹ After eliminating firms that did not sell a technological product, subsidiaries of larger firms, and where the founder had left, 83 firms were contacted for interviews in Calgary and 84 in Waterloo, leading to 28 (33.7%) and 23 (27.3%) entrepreneur interviews, respectively. Interviews were conducted until data saturation occurred.

Table 3: Type and Location of Interviews

Calgary has undergone a profound economic transformation as a result of the extraction of Alberta’s natural gas and petroleum reserves. The discovery of nearby natural gas deposits in the early 1900s and the later development of the Athabasca Tar Sands in Northern Alberta in the last two decades helped build Calgary from a small frontier town to a command and control centre for Canada’s resource sector and associated finance and support services (Chastko, 2004). All of Canada’s ten largest energy firms are headquartered in Calgary and the city’s financial industry has begun to displace Toronto as the gateway for investment into Canada’s resource sector. One of Canada’s largest entrepreneurial communities has developed around this economic engine: nearly 12% of Calgary’s population is self-employed, the highest rate in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2012).

Many of the region’s technology startups are oriented towards the energy industry, which interviewees saw as rich in entrepreneurial opportunities and more focused on speed of product development rather than price. As the founder of a software firm serving this industry said: “They weren't interested in saving money, they were only interested in getting it done. How much money isn't an issue” (C103). Other interviewees generally concurred with this view, with one investor saying, “A lot of technology [entrepreneurship] happens here. I think that 10 or 11% of the population is employed in the technology sector, but 99.5% of that is in technology for oil and gas.” (C135) Indeed, the oil and gas sector was the primary market for 17 of the 28 (68%) entrepreneurs interviewed in Calgary. This suggests that the oil and gas market within Calgary plays a critical role in the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The cultural foundation of Calgary’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is strongly influenced by the organizational culture of the oil and gas industry. The cultural outlooks of the industry are almost hegemonic within the region. As early as the 1980s, House (1980 p. 2) argued: “oil dominates the economic and social life of the city”. More recently, Langford et al. (2010) quote a successful Calgarian entrepreneur as saying: “This is an oil and gas town” (p. 3). The discourses of cowboys and roughnecks have contributed to a local culture that emphasizes the pursuit of wealth rather than the social prestige of building an advanced technology or stable enterprise. These cultural attitudes create higher social rewards for personal wealth than it does for technological or business achievements, such as being featured in a technology magazine like Wired or creating an internationally recognized business. These views are common within the region’s economy, affecting business practices in both large and small firms (Miller, 2002). In essence, interviews suggest that the region’s culture places a higher value of the economic rewards of entrepreneurship than on the social value of building a company, developing an advanced technology, or being one’s own boss.

These cultural outlooks have a profound influence on the nature of the ecosystem’s social and material attributes. This is most apparent when looking at interviewees’ attachment to entrepreneurship. Because of the importance of creating wealth within the region’s culture, most entrepreneurs structured their firms to grow as quickly as possible and positioned themselves for an eventual buyout offer from a larger firm rather than for long-term sustainability. 12 of the 28 (42%) interviewed entrepreneurs in Calgary were categorized as ‘profit-oriented’ because they had structured the firm to maximize their short-term personal profit rather than long term sustainability, compared to 1 of 23 entrepreneurs (4%) in Waterloo (��² = 7.936, p < .01). The visible presence of other startups that achieved profitable exits provides many examples for new entrepreneurs about the viability of profit-oriented entrepreneurship. In the words of one entrepreneur in the resource sector: “...especially [in] the gas business, these little firms get bought up, merged, and some of them bail, but most get merged and their assets get bought by a bigger fish...that’s just the nature of the oil business.” (C104)

As a result, few interviewees reported strong connections to their firms or to entrepreneurship in general. One entrepreneur reported that he had “created something that someone wants to buy, [but] I’ve got no emotional attachment to it. It's just a company... If someone today came and gave me an offer on [my firm], I'd be gone tomorrow. No emotional ties to this stuff what so ever.” (C127) Another said: “I wouldn't say that I dreamed about [entrepreneurship], but I also wouldn't say that I saw myself as doing a 9-to-5 employee gig for the rest of my life. I think it was sort of a preference, but it wasn't central to my being that I must be an entrepreneur, that I must start a business.” (C119) Other entrepreneurs reported selling more than 50% of their firms’ equity to investors, effectively giving up control of the firm in order enable faster growth. This suggests a lowered social status of entrepreneurship within the local culture, where the outcome (windfall profits from exiting the venture) is seen as more important than the overall entrepreneurial experience. Such outlooks contribute to a situation where there are fewer experienced serial entrepreneurs or independent startups to act as role models, reducing the capacity of the ecosystem to produce both direct mentors to advise new entrepreneurs or inspirational exemplars to motivate potential founders to take the risks of starting their own firm. Economic development officials in Calgary corroborated this view, with one saying: “We don’t have the RIMs,” meaning that there is no great startup success stories in the region to encourage entrepreneurs in the region (C107).

The low value placed on entrepreneurship within Calgary’s ecosystem negatively affected the willingness of employees to work at startups. Almost all interviewees reported that they could not compete with the high salaries and other fringe benefits offered by the major oil companies. The founder of an e-learning startup said: “Two days ago we had a new employee who spent one day here and said he got a better offer,” (C110) while an another entrepreneur outside the resource industry complained: “It’s energy, energy, energy [in Calgary]. If you’re doing tech or you’re a designer or a programmer, if you’re motivated by money it’s great. If you’re motivated by doing something a little bit different or creative it might not be as good of a fit.” (C121) Workers’ focus on wages suggests they also shared the perception of the lower social prestige for working at an innovative startup compared to a larger energy firm, reducing the number of potential employees willing to work in startups.

Furthermore, the focus on the economic gains of entrepreneurship over the social status of building a successful firm or technology affected the propensity of entrepreneurs to develop strong social ties with other entrepreneurs, limiting the effectiveness of social networks within the ecosystem. Most respondents expressed little desire to share advice or learn from the experiences of other entrepreneurs. Only 46% of interviewed entrepreneurs in Calgary reported seeking advice about the running business from family and friends, compared to 70% in Waterloo (��² = 3.638, p < .1). Entrepreneurs in Calgary typically thought it was more important to build their networks within the oil and gas industry, which many saw as an “old-boys network,” (C129) rather than with other local entrepreneurs. On the whole, interviewees reported frequently engaging in networking activities to keep abreast of new developments in the marketplace and find new clients, but that they spent little time meeting with other entrepreneurs to develop new their business skills. This suggests that while entrepreneurs do actively network, their focus is on finding new clients rather than meeting other entrepreneurs and sharing advice and support with them.

These outlooks towards networking contribute to the ineffectiveness of the ecosystem’s entrepreneurship support programs and other material attributes. While Innovate Calgary (a publicly funded startup incubation facility and entrepreneurial support organization) runs entrepreneurship training and networking programs, none of the interviewed entrepreneurs — even tenants of Innovate Calgary’s incubation centre — reported participating in them. Nor did interviewees regularly participate in networking events hosted by the city’s Chamber of Commerce or the University of Calgary. As one entrepreneur explained: “there’s been quite a few different entrepreneurship groups, but what I have found is that most of them are there because they think they’re going to get a chance to meet potential clients. What it ends up being is a bunch of people like themselves.” (C104) Another characterized them as “breakfast clubs where an unsuccessful car salesman and an unsuccessful relator and an unsuccessful insurance salesmen would get together for breakfast once a week.” (C127)

The local market is the most important attribute of Calgary’s ecosystem: large energy and natural resources firms are a constant source of new opportunities for startups. As one entrepreneur put it: “If you live in Calgary, and you want to make money, you should be in energy.” (C119) Calgary’s high rates of entrepreneurship and self-employment are almost entirely based around this industry and the large and open market for energy services is the main force behind its entire entrepreneurial ecosystem. However, the culture of this industry has contributed to an undervaluing of certain entrepreneurial activities within the region’s underlying culture, such as building networks with other entrepreneurs, focusing the firm on innovation rather than quick growth, or working for startups rather than large corporations. As a result, there is less support for material attributes of the ecosystem such as networking events or training to improve entrepreneurial skills. The absence of such programs contributes to the lowered importance of entrepreneurship within in the ecosystem.

Many observers connect this ecosystem with an entrepreneurial culture dating back to the region’s founding by Mennonite farmers and German immigrants in the 19^th century (Bramwell et al., 2008). While the reality of this connection is questionable, waves of German migrants to the region throughout the early 20^th century helped create a thriving industrial economy that was instrumental in the founding of the University of Waterloo in 1957 as a polytechnic university intended to supply local firms with skilled engineers (Scott, 1967; Bathelt and Spigel, 2011). As a result, the university has had an applied, entrepreneurial outlook that lead to the creation of features such as a mandatory co-op program in which students spend several semesters working at firms and acting as conduits for knowledge spillovers and an intellectual property regime in which faculty and students own the rights their innovations. These factors have led to to high rates of research spinoffs and academic entrepreneurship (Eastwood, 1987; Kenney and Patton, 2011). A similar culture has developed throughout the larger region that supports entrepreneurial risk taking and provides entrepreneurs and related actors with a great deal of social prestige. In the words of a local economic development officer: “[entrepreneurship] is a part of our DNA…entrepreneurs matter. It’s a badge of honour.” (W101). Numerous interviewees discussed how an entrepreneurial ethos permeates the community and how, in the words of one entrepreneur: “...we’re just so lucky that everyone is prepared to share and be involved and that there’s a bunch of structured mentoring and networking and there’s a ton of informal stuff that just happens that people just take care of each other in the region.” (W115).

This culture is based around two pillars. The first is the presence of many success stories from local startups that grew into internationally competitive firms. While Blackberry’s journey from a small pager designer to an international smartphone leader is the most famous, other local successes include OpenText, a database company spun out of the University of Waterloo and KIK, an instant messaging service with over 100 million users founded by a University of Waterloo alumnus. These success stories inspire others to follow in their path. As a local investor argued: “everybody you talk to wants to get that big, wants to grow fast and to be able to get into the international markets as quickly as possible, and all the entrepreneurs really try to be RIM…. and to understand and realize that it can be done.” (W128). Second, the University of Waterloo attracts numerous students with preexisting entrepreneurial intentions and its history of successful spinoffs and entrepreneurship programs helps foster these outlooks in the rest of the study body. These students will develop positive attitudes towards entrepreneurship by the time they enter the local labour market, encouraging them to either start their own firm or to work at startups.

This culture promotes the formation of strong and dense social networks between entrepreneurs, workers, advisors, and investors. Many respondents believed that sharing their experiences and learning from others was an essential part of being an entrepreneur in Waterloo. As one explained:

Here, unlike any other community that I’ve lived or worked [in], there’s a strong sense of not just a desire, but a responsibility, to help up and coming companies, especially technology companies…We do a good job of integrating people into the community and that builds strong ties...I’d hazard a guess that we have more individuals in this community that have very broad, expansive networks than other communities. (W114)

Local policymakers held similar views, with one saying: “what you’ll find is that this community is very well networked. There are networking functions daily. I can go to any of those functions and know most of the people in that room. And we all circulate in different circles, but we’re all connected.” (W107) Comments like these suggest that networking is a highly valued practice within the community. This is born out by the significantly higher rates of entrepreneurs in Waterloo reporting to have discussed their firm issues with family and friends discussed above.

The importance of entrepreneurship and networking in the region’s culture has encouraged many successful business people to participate in these networks, contributing to their high perceived valued by entrepreneurs. A local venture capitalist explained that: “the CEOs of the large companies, whether it’s [former co-CEOs] Mike [Lazaridis] and Jim [Balsillie] at RIM or Tom Jenkins at OpenText…will help the next generation of entrepreneurs. [If I] sent a note over to [them] to say I met with this company, the CEO has been struggling with this or that, would you be able to help them. I know they’re going to get a response.” (W115)

The cultural importance of entrepreneurship within the community has helped build strong networks of skilled workers accustomed to the unique demands and opportunities of working in a startup. None of the entrepreneurs interviewed in Waterloo experienced the same the challenges as their counterparts in Calgary did of competing against the much higher salaries from larger firms. Instead, the normalization of working within startups has allowed entrepreneurs leeway in offering lower salaries or job security in favour of a more relaxed workplace and the possibility of revenue sharing. The social status accorded workers in firms that are seen as particularly innovative can serve as a substitute for more pecuniary interests. For example, one entrepreneur reported that his workers were willing to forgo their pay during periods of low cash flow in exchange for flexible working conditions and a portion of future revenues. The founder believed that: “the model of being able to work from home, be your own boss and get to be a participant in a pretty cool product made up for not getting a pay check.” (W130)

The material attributes of Waterloo’s ecosystem helped maintain the strong cultural support for entrepreneurship amongst workers, mentors, and successful business as well as the entrepreneurs themselves. Communitech, a non-profit entrepreneurship support organization, has been very successful in promoting the ethos of technology entrepreneurship throughout the region. Some of this support is direct, such as its Accelerator Centre and Hyperdive incubator that supply subsidized office space, early stage funding, and expert advising to selected local startups. Other programs provide less direct support to individual firms but help create a community entrepreneurs can turn to when necessary. The organization’s peer-to-peer groups and networking events give entrepreneurs the opportunity to meet both other firm founders as well as executives from larger firms and prospective investors, advisors and mentors. Many interviewees said these networking programs helped them learn from other entrepreneurs who had encountered similar problems as them as well as introducing them to more senior business people who can provide guidance on long-term strategic decisions. As one entrepreneur described: “[Communitech] was instrumental for us at the early stage. It gives you access to facilities, access to contacts and the events. Again, that’s induced serendipity. You attend events certainly to pick up information, but you also run into the types of people who are maybe interested in investing or who can help out.” (W118)

These events do more than simply help entrepreneurs connect with like-minded people: by allowing new entrepreneurs to meet with more successful entrepreneurs, Communitech and other local organizations are able to promote a particular vision of high-growth technology-led firms. This vision helps reproduce the cultural importance of technology entrepreneurship within the region’s ecosystem by celebrating successful entrepreneurs and normalizing particular practices like young university graduates founding growth-oriented companies. Communitech is in a position to influence how entrepreneurship is understood, in effect allowing it to reinforce the ecosystem’s social and cultural attributes. However, Communitech could not have become such a successful material attribute of the ecosystem without the support of local business and political leaders that came about through the preexisting social and cultural attributes that supported technology-based entrepreneurship. The high social status of entrepreneurship encourages successful business people to pledge both time and money to support these organizations.

6. DISCUSSION

Both Calgary and Waterloo feature feedback loops between the cultural, social, and material attributes of their ecosystems (see Figure 2). In the case of Waterloo, organizations like Communitech and the University of Waterloo promote networking amongst entrepreneurial actors as well as highlight local examples of successful technology entrepreneurship, increasing the social status of entrepreneurship. This encourages actors within the region to participate in these networks, to dedicate their limited time to advising or mentoring entrepreneurs, or to work in a high-risk startup. The high level of entrepreneurial activity created by this reproduces and reinforces the region’s pre-existing cultural outlooks towards entrepreneurship. The strength of these attributes and their relationships creates a rich, ‘munificent’ ecosystem for technology entrepreneurship.

Calgary represents a more ‘arid’ ecosystem. The predilection for personal wealth creates an incentive to build startups whose focus is on creating quick profits by serving the immediate needs of the local resource sector rather than building an advanced technology with global demand or a sustainable business model. This should not be interpreted as greed, but instead that social standing within Calgary’s entrepreneurial community is largely created through personal wealth rather than other types of business accomplishments. As a result, entrepreneurs have little incentive to dedicate a great deal of time to networking with other entrepreneurs or advisors when they could focus on scanning their environment for new business opportunities. Given this context, it is difficult for entrepreneurial support organizations like Innovate Calgary to strengthen existing networks amongst entrepreneurs or build new ones. This leads to the low levels of engagement within the ecosystem’s social attributes, which is further perpetuated by the pre-existing profit-oriented culture. The weakness of Calgary’s ecosystem stands in contrast to its high rates of technology entrepreneurship; the region’s booming economy acts as a catalyst for entrepreneurial activity.

Figure 2: Relationships Between Ecosystem Attributes in Calgary and Waterloo

To build on the biological metaphor inherent in the term ‘ecosystem’: Calgary’s ecosystem can be thought of as an industrialized cornfield while Waterloo’s is more similar to a meadow. A cornfield is capable of extraordinary yields, but only when it is constantly fertilized, ploughed, and protected with pesticides. Its productivity quickly collapses without this intervention. Without strong relationships between its cultural, social, and material attributes, it is likely that Calgary’s entrepreneurial economy would deteriorate if the local resource sector were to suffer a protracted downturn due to declining petroleum prices, as it did in the 1980s and 1990s. A meadow has lower productivity, but its rich web of plants and animals creates a resilient and self-perpetuating ecology. The strong linkages between its cultural, social, and material attributes suggest that Waterloo’s ecosystem will be resilient to shocks such as the decline of Blackberry since 2012.