Biomedical entrepreneurship in U.S. regions

Entrepreneurial ecosystem researchers generally focus on the few dominant factors affecting entrepreneurship. Insufficient attention has been paid to the interdependencies among regional conditions within an entrepreneurial ecosystem. We focus on the collective effects of factors for regional biomedical entrepreneurship. We use the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method to identify sets of regional conditions promoting biomedical entrepreneurship in all 381 U.S. metropolitan areas. The results indicate three configurations contributing to high levels of regional biomedical entrepreneurship: the first one combines public sector biomedical R&D, biomedical patents, and human capital, thus stressing science conditions and related human capital; the second combines public sector biomedical R&D, biomedical patents, clinical trials, and venture capital, thus placing more emphasis on the regional infrastructure sustaining entrepreneurial activity; the third combines private sector biomedical R&D, biomedical patents, human capital, per capita income, population density, and venture capital, thus emphasizing the private sector’s role on boosting regional biomedical entrepreneurship. There is no single recipe for a region to increase its level of biomedical entrepreneurship.