This document discusses measuring digital entrepreneurial ecosystems. It introduces GEDI's framework for understanding the intersection of digital and entrepreneurial ecosystems. The framework consists of four concepts: digital infrastructure governance, digital user citizenship, digital entrepreneurship, and digital marketplace. The document also provides an overview of recent GEDI research on defining and conceptualizing digital entrepreneurial ecosystems. Additionally, it presents preliminary approaches to measuring these ecosystems through a sub-index approach and examines the relationship between unicorns per population and measures of digital entrepreneurship.

1. Measuring the Digital
Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
Ainsley Lloyd
The GEDI Institute

2. Understanding digital entrepreneurship
ecosystems
• GEDI’s Telefonica Index on Digital Life –
understanding digital life
• Recent GEDI research – understanding the
intersection of digital and entrepreneurial
ecosystems
• Unicorns and digital entrepreneurship
ecosystems

3. Telefonica Index on Digital Life
https://thegedi.org/telefonica-index-on-digital-life/

4. Digital life

5. Digital life and GDP

6. Recent GEDI research
• A significant gap exists in the conceptualization of entrepreneurship in the
digital age. We introduce a conceptual framework for entrepreneurship in
the digital age by integrating two well established concepts: the digital
ecosystem and the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The integration of these
two ecosystems helps us better understand the interactions of agents and
users that incorporate insights of consumers’ individual and social behavior.
• The Digital Entrepreneurial Ecosystem framework consists of four concepts:
digital infrastructure governance, digital user citizenship, digital
entrepreneurship, and digital marketplace. The digital marketplace is the
interaction of agents and users in e-social network based business, e-
commerce and digital services including e-health, e-education, and e-
government.

7. Definition of Entrepreneurial
Ecosystem
• we define entrepreneurial ecosystems at the
socio-economic level with properties of self-
organization, scalability and sustainability,
composed of sub-systems and systems, as
• “…a dynamic institutionally embedded
interaction between entrepreneurial attitudes,
abilities and aspirations, by individuals, which
drives the allocation of resources through the
creation and operation of new ventures.”

8. The Merging of Two Ecosystems
Digital
ecosystems
Entrepreneurial
ecosystems
Digital
Entrepreneurial
ecosystems

9. Conceptual Framework of Digital
Entrepreneurship Ecosystems

10. Unicorns: Startups valued at $1 billion

12. Country Unicorns Country2 Unicorns3
United States 95 Czech Republic 1
China 33 France 1
Germany 6 Indonesia 1
India 6 Japan 1
United Kingdom 6 Luxembourg 1
Singapore 3 Netherlands 1
South Korea 3 Nigeria 1
Canada 2 Scotland 1
Israel 2 Switzerland 1
Sweden 2 United Arab Emirates 1
Argentina 1
Data from https://www.cbinsights.com/research-unicorn-companies, 12-Aug-16

13. Company
Valuation
($B)
Date Joined Country Industry Select Investors
Uber $68 8/23/2013 United States On-Demand
Lowercase Capital,
Benchmark Capital,
Xiaomi $46 12/21/2011 China Hardware
Digital Sky Technologies,
QiMing Venture Partners,
Didi Chuxing $36 12/31/2014 China On-Demand
Matrix Partners, Tiger
Global Management,
Airbnb $30 7/26/2011 United States eCommerce/Marketplace
General Catalyst Partners,
Andreessen Horowitz,
Palantir Technologies $20 5/5/2011 United States Big Data
RRE Ventures, Founders
Fund, In-Q-Tel
Lu.com $18.50 12/26/2014 China Fintech
Ping An Insurance CDH
Investments, Bank of
China Internet Plus
Holding
$18 12/22/2015 China eCommerce/Marketplace
DST Global, Trustbridge
Partners, Capital Today
Snapchat $18 12/11/2013 United States Social
Benchmark Capital,
General Catalyst Partners,
WeWork $16 2/3/2014 United States Facilities
T. Rowe Price, Benchmark
Capital, Wellington
Flipkart $16 8/6/2012 India eCommerce/Marketplace
Accel Partners, Digital Sky
Technologies, Iconiq
Data from https://www.cbinsights.com/research-unicorn-companies, 12-Aug-16
Top ten unicorns

14. Understanding digital
entrepreneurship ecosystems
• They are global – more interconnected than
traditional entrepreneurship ecosystems
(customers can be anywhere)
• They allow leap-frogging – entrepreneurs can
participate without the conventional
requirements (geography, education, some
institutional/ infrastructure factors)
• They are flexible and social – they rely heavily on
digital networks (the sharing economy)
• They produce unicorns

15. Unicorn industries
80% of unicorns are in industries that are by definition digital
Industry Unicorns Industry Unicorns
eCommerce/Marketplace 36 Gaming 3
Internet Software & Services 27 Media 3
Fintech 20 Facilities 2
Big Data 14 VR/AR 2
Healthcare 11 Ed Tech 2
On-Demand 10 Auto Tech 1
Cybersecurity 9 Clothing & Accessories 1
Social 9 Greentech 1
Hardware 8 Other Transportation 1
Mobile Software & Services 5 Robotics 1
Adtech 3

16. Measuring digital entrepreneurship:
a preliminary approach
DIGITALENTREPRENEURSHIPECOSYSTEM
Sub-indexes Pillars Variables
DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP
Digital
technology
absorption
Firm level technology absorption (Institutions)
Availability of latest technology (Users)
DIGITAL GOVERNANCE Digital freedom
Business freedom (Institutions)
Laws relating to ICTs (Digital Infrastructure)
DIGITAL
MARKETPLACE
E-education
E-education: Internet access in school (Agents)
E-education: MOOC per population (Users)
DIGITAL
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Digital business
Digital startups (Agents)
Impact of ICT (Digital Infrastructure)

17. Unicorns per population vs.
Digital entrepreneurship
Singapore
United States
United Kingdom
Canada
Sweden
Switzerland
United Arab Emirates
Netherlands
Israel
Germany
France
South Korea
Japan
Czech Republic
Indonesia
Argentina
India
Nigeria
China
R² = 0.4231
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0 20 40 60 80 100
Unicornsper1millionpopulation
GEDI simplified digital entrepreneurship ecosystem measure

18. Measurement issues
• How to identify a digital enterprise – not
necessarily tech sector (WeWork, Buzzfeed)
• How to quantify intangible aspects like
networks and flexible innovations (Integration
across websites/apps)
• How to value the contribution of digital
enterprises (valuation vs. customers served)

19. Thank You
www.thegedi.org
ainsley@thegedi.org