The Creation of the New Media Ecosystem in New York City: an Entrepreneurial Approach

The objective of this study was to further the understanding of entrepreneurship by disaggregating entrepreneurial activity into three distinct actors (freelancing, anti-institutional and institutional). Each of these actors performs different functions in the creation and evolution of the new media ecosystem/cluster. Design/methodology/approach: This paper uses a qualitative historical analysis of the New York City New Media Ecosystem (Silicon Alley). The analysis identifies a key tipping point where institutional logic changes, a necessary condition for ecosystem creation, and furthers the study of ecosystems by fitting the study to a dialectic process model. Findings:Each of these entrepreneurial actors (freelancing, anti-institutional and institutional) performs a different, but complimentary, role in a different phase of the ecosystem evolution, so they warrant individual attention. The study of ecosystems is furthered by the identification of the dynamic relationships among these entrepreneur actors and how their roles, and the relative importance of their roles, change over time. Research/practical implications:We know very little about how individual entrepreneurs actually transform the institutions that foster or preclude the creation of ecosystems, which makes it relatively hard to put theoretical insight into practice. A dialectic process model is used to analyze a historical case and gain insight into the processes of contestation and entrepreneurship that explain the emergence of a new ecosystem. Originality/value:The study highlights the importance of using a narrative approach to identify continuous change factors rather than the traditional comparative static approach to study network changes.