As a powerful force for addressing global challenges (Fetters et al., 2010) and contributing to the economic future (Daniel et al., 2018), entrepreneurship has slowly demonstrated its charm since the beginning of the twenty-first century. There is an emerging trend that the entrepreneurship ecosystem (EE) has become a focus in the field of entrepreneurship research (Zacharakis et al., 2003; Isenberg, 2010; Malecki, 2011; Feldman and Zoller, 2012; Mason and Brown, 2014). The EE can be considered as an environment surrounding entrepreneurial activities. If the entrepreneurial environment around entrepreneurs is healthy, the output of start-ups can improve the economic and non-economic performance of the local society (Art, 2018). From the perspective of social and economic development, the research on the EE is of great significance. EE can serve not only as a catalyst for accelerating the economic progress of a stable economy but also as a driving force to rescue an economy facing a sharp decline (Hechavarria and Ingram, 2014).

In the EE, the educational organization, especially the university, is often seen as an important aspect or element of the EE by many scholars. Universities play an important role in cultivating entrepreneurs (Campanella et al., 2013). Isenberg (2011) saw education institutions as one of the important contents of the EE. George and Carlos (2013) regarded the major universities as catalysts of the EE. In addition, organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the National Women's Business Council also regard universities as an important element of entrepreneurship ecology. Some scholars directly pointed out that the university itself has formed a unique EE, and research on the university entrepreneurship ecosystem (UEE) has been done subsequently (Fetters et al., 2010; Miller and Acs, 2017). A well-structured UEE can provide rich resources and institutional support for campus entrepreneurs. To explore the nature of the UEE, the following research questions frame the study as follows: (1) What are the key factors that influence the formation and development of a UEE? and (2) What role do these factors play in the UEE?

The term ecosystem was derived from the field of ecology. It was originally proposed by Roy Clapham in 1930 and adopted by Arthur Tansley in his famous article “The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts and Terms” (Tansley, 1935; Brush, 2014). In 1993, for the first time, James F. Moore introduced the term “ecosystem” into the world of business and coined the concept of the business ecosystem (Moore, 1933; Mason and Brown, 2014; Neumeyer and Corbett, 2017; Daniel et al., 2018; Freitas and Kitson, 2018). He believed that the development of business depends on a range of stakeholders interacting with each other, such as suppliers, producers, sellers, market intermediaries, investors, governments, consumers, and so on (Moore, 1933).

Subsequently, the concept of the EE has received a lot of attention from academia which emphasizes the need for a more holistic and dynamic approach (Mason, 2019). The EE enables individuals, companies, and communities to effectively unite and create economic wealth and prosperity (Prahalad, 2005). The initial research mostly focused on exploring the concept of EEs. For example, Carvalho et al. (2010) proposed that the EE includes a set of tangible and intangible resources and actors, which are characterized by interdependent relationships that produce important synergies. Hechavarria and Ingram (2014) proposed that the EE is defined as a group of interrelated entrepreneurial actors, entrepreneurial organizations, institutions, and entrepreneurial processes that formally and informally combine to mediate and manage performance in the local entrepreneurial environment. From a larger perspective, Nicotra et al. (2018) proposed that the EE is a combination of social, political, economic, and cultural factors in a region, supporting the development and growth of innovative and entrepreneurial enterprises.

In addition to the definition of the EE, some scholars have analyzed the supporting elements or pillars of the EE. Cohen (2005) outlined seven factors of the EE, including informal network, formal network, university, government, professional and support services, capital services, and talent pools. Isenberg (2011) pointed out that the EE consists of six domains, namely, policy, finance, culture, market, human capital, and support system. George and Carlos (2013) put forward nine pillars of the EE, namely, market openness, human capital, funding and financing, mentor consultation support system, rules and regulations, facilities, education and training, university catalysis, and culture. Aldrich et al. (1989) concluded that the EE is characterized by family businesses and role models, a diversified economy, a strong business infrastructure, available investment capital, a supportive entrepreneurial culture, and public policies that encourage entrepreneurship.

The building strategies and evaluation methods of an EE are also scattered in the research of some scholars. Lawlor (2014) raised the strategies to build an EE, including attaching importance to the development of individual businesses or small- and medium-sized enterprises, regional entrepreneurial activities should break out of urban boundaries and form a network of multi-city and multi-regional linkages; strengthen the projects and financial support, strengthen the cooperation between academic institutions and business groups, and reduce financial obstacles in the development of enterprises. Mason and Brown (2014) analyzed the concept, characteristics, and model of the EE and discussed the principles, methods, and evaluation methods of policies supporting the development of the EE. Stangler and Jordan (2015) proposed four indicators to measure the activity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, namely, density, liquidity, connectivity, and diversity.

The place is part of the EE concept. The environment and the nature of the place can be considered as key factors affecting the arrangements of entities, availability of resources, and the nature of processes and interactions therein. The place can be as large as a region, a city, or as small as a company or university (Daniel et al., 2018). In this study, as a place, the university not only can be an important supporting element of the EE (Carvalho et al., 2010; Audretsch and Link, 2017) but can also become the EE itself. The EE developed with a university campus as a “place” is called university-based entrepreneurship ecosystem (UBEE) (Fetters et al., 2010; Ruth, 2014; Art, 2018) or UEE (Brush, 2014; Miller and Acs, 2017; Suryanto, 2019). These different terms all refer to ecosystems developed on the campus of universities, which are part of a larger ecosystem (Rice and Habbershon, 2006; Fetters et al., 2010), and different from regional ecosystems due to the knowledge attributes of universities. The creating of the UEE is currently a hot topic. With the development of entrepreneurship education in the United States, many universities have formed entrepreneurial centers dedicated to creating EEs (Torrance, 2013; Schmidt and Molkentin, 2015). Research on EE is of great significance to enhance the entrepreneurial willingness and entrepreneurship rate of students. The cooperation between universities and industries, as well as their knowledge generation and technological development, promote the derivation of high-tech enterprises and the emergence of start-ups (Audretsch and Link, 2017). Thus, the UEE can enhance the regional EE and form an entrepreneurship cycle, which can create more jobs and stimulate economic vitality.

Similar to the research on the EE, scholars pay more attention to the connotation and elements of the UEE. Fetters et al. (2010) initially framed the discussion of UBEE and identified seven factors that contribute to the evolution of UBEE, namely, senior leadership vision and engagement sponsorship, strong programmatic and faculty leadership, sustained commitment over a long period of time, the commitment of substantial financial resources, commitment to continuing innovation in curriculum and programs, appropriate organizational infrastructure, and commitment to building the extended enterprise and achieving critical mass. By identifying the most highly regarded entrepreneurial universities outside the world, Ruth (2014) summarized seven factors that underpin these UEE, namely, institutions, culture, university leadership, university research capabilities, regional or government support, effective institutional strategies, and strong student entrepreneurial demand. Different from the previous two scholars, he pointed out that entrepreneurship education or courses are considered an important element of the UEE. Suryanto (2019) believed that the components of the UEE should include higher education council policies, policies of university leaders in courses, the existence of business incubation centers, downstream research products, lecturers who change the thinking of students, and collaboration with government agencies and bank institutions. Based on the above components, he also proposed five strategies for creating the UEE, namely, good course design, improving the teaching methods of entrepreneurship courses, acceleration of research downstream products, collaboration with other institutions, and awarding best entrepreneurship. Similarly, Art (2018) identified the components of the UBEE, including curriculum, extra-curricular, traditional technology transfer office, bridging mechanisms, resources and community engagement, and informal engagement. Brush (2014) believed that the internal ecosystem of entrepreneurship education is the core of the UEE, and she divided the internal entrepreneurship education ecosystem into three major areas (i.e., start-up courses, extracurricular activities, and research) and four dimensions (i.e., stakeholders, resources, facilities, and culture).

The UEE can provide available assets, liberty, and diversity while creating opportunities and fostering entrepreneurship and innovation (Miller and Acs, 2017). However, most of the existing studies focus on the concept and elements of EEs, portraying a lack of sufficient empirical study (Stam, 2015; Audretsch et al., 2018; Shwetzer et al., 2019), let alone the empirical study of UEE. In addition, the role of the network (Ter and Boschma, 2011) and the interaction of individual elements in EEs have not been fully explored (Motoyama and Watkins, 2014).

This study adopted the qualitative research methodology as it could gain a complex, detailed understanding of the issue and identify variables that can be measured (Creswell, 1994, 2007). Specifically, this research combines empirical study with literature study, and a case study at an American university (AU) in Los Angeles was conducted.

Central to this study is the conviction that extracurricular activities, networks, entrepreneurial culture, and leadership are important factors in developing the UEE. We make this assumption primarily based on the existing research in the UEE. Our study provides empirical evidence and reinforces this point of view relative to the UEE at an AU.

More specifically, we found that, compared with formal courses, students tend to give more positive comments on extracurricular activities. The inability of entrepreneurship courses to function effectively may be attributed to the insufficiency of the entrepreneurship curriculum. Except for business schools, university liberal education cannot provide students with systematic and effective entrepreneurship education and guidance. Here, we considered the study by Art (2018) on universities and EE that UBEEs can range from less to more developed UBEEs. In the embryonic stage of the EE, the UBEE can only provide limited offerings, such as limited courses or student clubs.

Consistent with Art (2018), the network plays an important role in building the UBEE. In other words, the university serves as a bridge to connect the campus and the social community as well as some entity organizations that range from regional to national or global entrepreneurship groups. As important bridging assets, networks promote the interaction and cooperation among EE elements. In these networks, information is transmitted through formal or informal channels, which enable the entrepreneurs to find entrepreneurial opportunities, cofounders, and mentors, obtain entrepreneurial funds, recruit early team members, and share knowledge and other resources.

Culture is an important factor to promote an individual behavior. It will make it easy to understand why these individuals agglomerate in the UEE from a cultural perspective. In this study, many businessmen come to the UEE due to the culture of helping others and back feeding, while student participants are more influenced by the entrepreneurship and surrounding environment.

EEs are intentional communities of economic actors whose individual business activities can largely determine the fate of the EE (Moore, 2006; Daniel et al., 2018). The EE itself may be seen as an intervention tool to mediate the actions of entrepreneurs to achieve specific goals. Thus, politically motivated actors can take action to change the trajectory of the ecosystem (Daniel et al., 2018). A clear vision and institutional support provided by the senior manager of the university helps to implement the entrepreneurial strategy (Clark, 1998). However, it is worth noting that although leadership can play a positive role in the formation of the UEE, but it does not guarantee its formation. The formation of the UEE needs the support of many factors, such as active entrepreneurial culture, developed regional economy, and supportive entrepreneurship policy. It can be safe to say that it is difficult to form the UEE in a second-class university with poor scientific research ability in an underdeveloped area as the UEEs often occur in knowledge-based institutions or regions that have large numbers of scientists and engineers.

In brief, the UEE is a network system with complex elements, including individuals (e.g., student entrepreneurs, faculty, university leaders, project organizers, entrepreneurs, businessmen, venture capitalists, lawyers, consultants, etc.), organizations, curricular activities, extracurricular activities, and capital. Among them, the organizer of the extracurricular activities is the key to connect campus entrepreneurs with resources, as an intermediary, playing the role of connection and service. Entrepreneurship resource providers bring resources for the entrepreneurial activities of students, including entrepreneurs, sponsors, bankers, economists, legal advisers, corporate executives, investors, and other stakeholders. Diversified extracurricular activities have played an important role in stimulating the interest of students in entrepreneurship, providing students with a large number of entrepreneurial resources. Student entrepreneurs also tend to obtain the guidance and resources they need through these activities. All these elements are connected by networks, and resources are circulated through these networks. In addition, the creation of a UEE requires the strong leadership of university leaders. It can be certain that the UEE cannot be built by one side, it is necessary to form multi-side cooperation from the public and private sectors.

Undoubtedly, the factors that affect the UEE are not only the four factors identified by this study. Entrepreneurship courses, national economic policies, innovation and scientific research, venture capital, technology transformation, regional economic development, and entrepreneurial ecology can also be the factors that affect the UEE. The complexity of the UEE makes it impossible for this study to construct its framework completely and include all its influencing factors. Due to space limitations, this exploratory study presents these four factors as the major findings of this research.

This study was conducted in an American university. Like other qualitative studies, the generalizability of the research findings is limited. The strength of qualitative research is arguably the ability to more deeply contextualize sociological phenomena (Sun, 2018), and this is different from the quantitative research that conducts through a large amount of statistical data. Employing interactive interviews, this study determined the four factors influencing the formation and operation of the UEE through empirical experience, which provides a research foundation for subsequent quantitative research. In the future, it needs to expand the cases by studying the UEE at other entrepreneurial universities worldwide. It is possible that the findings identified in this study may differ in some significant way if conducted at another university, but this does not decrease the value and quality of this research as more factors and mechanisms that affect the formation and operation of the UEE need to be verified to provide more empirical support for future theoretical construction.

Time is a principle that must be adhered to in the research of the UEE. The static method used in studying the UEE neglected the origin and self-sustainable development process of the EE (Mason and Brown, 2014). As UEE has been in the process of development, the temporal nature of the EE is a topic that cannot be ignored (Chou and Zolkiewski, 2012; Möller, 2013; Medlin and Törnroos, 2015; Andersen and Medlin, 2016; Fonfara et al., 2016; Daniel et al., 2018). This study is carried out in a period, so it can only provide insights on one stage of the development of the UEE. The development of the ecosystem will change with time and experience the process of emergence, development, maturity, and even extinction. Therefore, time should be an important dimension when researching or building a UEE in the future.

It should be noted that technological innovation is a feature of entrepreneurship of university students and an indispensable force in the UEEs. Therefore, the impact of organizations, such as incubators and technology transfer offices, on the formation and development of the UEE is an important direction in the future. In addition, the elements of the ecosystem that are conducive to student entrepreneurship are not necessarily the elements of the EE that are conducive to teacher entrepreneurship (Scgaeffer and Matt, 2016; Matt and Scgaeffer, 2018). In fact, this study explains the elements and the role these elements play in the formation and operation of the UEE from the perspective of student entrepreneurs. The role of teacher entrepreneurs in the formation of the UEE is also a direction that needs to be concerned in the future.

The original contributions generated for the study are included in the article, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

XW designed the study, collected and analyzed data, and wrote the manuscript. SL provided suggestions for the article and helped revise the article. XS and CM provided idea. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This research was supported by Scientific Research Start-up Funding Project of Hangzhou Normal University (RWSK20181012), Educational science planning project of Zhejiang Province (2019SCG017).

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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