A flourishing entrepreneurial ecosystem contains 5 elements

1. A supporting culture. A simple way of measuring this is if a young person tells their parents they are dating an entrepreneur of a new company, are those parents excited or trying to convince their child to date the doctor or engineer.

2. Engaged and Individual network actors are the most critical, along with suitable data that backs the effect on these individuals. Do mentors provide pro-bono coaching? Are people willing to connect entrepreneurs and startups to their network? Are people willing to connect volunteers that support entrepreneurship programs?

3. Impactful and Sustainable Entrepreneurship Programs: This is what most ecosystem mapping and analysis measure. Quality is more important than quantity, so it's essential to see effective programs moving entrepreneurs along their journey. Also equally important is ensuring programs are financially sustainable and have multi-year funding.

4. Honest, transparent, and unbiased government policy: I don’t believe that entrepreneurs and startups should be another economic and political force that needs special regulations, tax relief, or subsidies. Sound policies for entrepreneurs are suitable for all businesses.

5. A financial system with a diverse range of products and services, a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem has a diverse number of financial products and services for diverse entrepreneur needs.

What is an Entrepreneur Support Organization (ESO's)

Entrepreneur Support Organizations (ESOs) are the non-financial organizations providing support to any entrepreneur at any stage of their development. These are the accelerators, incubators, professional groups, SME Associations, government agencies, university resource centers, boot camps, etc. Much of my work supports these organizations in their programming and business models.

My definition of an entrepreneur comes from Joseph Schumpeter

A great definition of " entrepreneur" comes from Joseph Schumpeter “an entrepreneur is a person who is willing and able to convert a new idea or invention into a successful innovation… creating new products including new business models. In this way, creative destruction is largely responsible for the dynamism of industries and long-run economic growth.” All enterprises are not entrepreneurs. If we look at different studies, we will see that only about 3% to 12% of a country's population of enterprises are entrepreneurs. But they do come from all sectors and locations.

Most tech startups that get much of the public attention are entrepreneurs, but the entrepreneur population is much bigger than tech startups. I think the best proxy for what an entrepreneur represents in the U.S. can be found in the Inc. 5000 article.