Taking startup ecosystem rankings seriously: What is the relationship between benchmarks and the entrepreneurial ecosystems they rank?

Abstract

The last decade has seen the growth of a benchmarking industry that purports to measure, compare, and ultimately rank the performance of ‘startup ecosystems’ globally. While entrepreneurial ecosystem scholars frequently utilize these rankings to justify their case studies, there has been little critical interrogation of these benchmark and ranking practices. This paper uses a case study of the Singapore FinTech entrepreneurial ecosystem, which has been consistently ranked as one of the best globally, to question how the rankings were achieved and whether they were warranted. Findings suggest that the Singapore FinTech entrepreneurial ecosystem benefit from the timely emergence of FinTech benchmarking practices that placed significant emphasis on government policy interventions in their methodologies, and which may have overestimated the effects of these interventions in the high rankings they ordained. The study produces several key insights: 1) that EE rankings are normatively constructed using subjective and limited methodologies; 2) that the significant emphasis placed on policy interventions means that rankings could potentially be ‘gamed’ should policymakers introduce superficial or ineffective yet favourably viewed policies; and 3) that EE rankings serve as cultural artifacts that can be strategically used in the venture-level framing strategies of entrepreneurs and the system-level narratives of EEs to drive development outcomes. Consequently, this paper calls for entrepreneurship scholars to take EE benchmarks and rankings more seriously, with important implications for literatures on entrepreneurial framing, hype, and entrepreneurial ecosystems, more broadly. • Outlines the growth and importance of the startup ecosystem benchmark and ranking industry. • Finds that startup ecosystem rankings are normatively constructed using subjective and limited methodologies that misrepresented the Singapore FinTech entrepreneurial ecosystem. • Cautions that the significant emphasis placed on policy interventions in benchmarks means that rankings could potentially be ‘gamed’ should policymakers introduce superficial or ineffective yet favourably viewed policies. • Argues that startup ecosystem rankings serve as cultural artifacts that can be strategically used in the venture-level framing strategies of entrepreneurs and the system-level narratives of entrepreneurial ecosystems to drive development outcomes. • Outlines potential areas of engagement for related entrepreneurship literatures.