Accelerating Smart Growth through Collective Intelligence: the Conceptual Foundation of the Technology Entrepreneurship "eGosystem"

Purpose – This article defines the foundation of a new organizational, process and service paradigm aimed to support the smart growth of territories through more performing technology entrepreneurship initiatives enabled by a collective intelligence approach. Design/methodology/approach – An extended literature analysis has been addressed to define the main components of the model, i.e. Entrepreneurial Actor, Innovative Entrepreneurial Project, Technology Entrepreneurship Roadmap, and Technology Entrepreneurship Ecosystem. The area of technology entrepreneurship processes and the approach and tools of collective intelligence are hybridized, also using expert validation, with the final perspective to introduce an “eGosystem” model. Originality/value – The article introduces the core design elements for the creation of collaborative technology ecosystems which are glocal and context-independent (using ICT and virtuality), specific (tailored to technology domains) and dynamic (phase and time-dependent). The eGosystem adopts a “push” logic to build proactively around the entrepreneur a system of information, resources, knowledge assets, educational experiences, services, competencies and relations needed to successful stay on the market. Practical implications – The entrepreneurship eGosystem model can be the basis upon which to build more effective tech-entrepreneurship processes and promote smart growth of regions and territories, as well as to create the foundation of integrated approaches to human capital creation in the technology entrepreneurship domain.