Entrepreneurs: Navigate, Develop, and Transform Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

Our understanding of how entrepreneurs navigate entrepreneurial ecosystems to access resources and support remains limited. This is a particularly important issue to understand, as not all entrepreneurs have the same access to resources. To address this question, we studied 24 women entrepreneurs in Kabul (Afghanistan), an extremely adverse context in which the entrepreneurial ecosystem offers comparably little resources and support and where it is even harder for women to access the resources and support. Our findings reveal three mechanisms that successful women entrepreneurs draw upon: blending into their local ecosystem, bridging to other ecosystems and building their own support system that not only help them access resources and support but in turn also develop and transform their local entrepreneurial ecosystem. Developing a theoretical framework based upon these mechanisms, we contribute to the research of entrepreneurial ecosystems.