Open Workshop: Leading Entrepreneurial Ecosystems Across Geopolitical Contexts
The aim of the Open Workshop Series in Business and Management Studies is to promote top-quality academic and applied research in various fields of the social sciences. This is a unique opportunity for sharing knowledge and networking with local and international community members.
Ecosystem leadership is critical to the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems, yet it remains undertheorized. Although research increasingly recognizes the importance of actors who mobilize resources, connect stakeholders and guide collective action, we still know relatively little about how ecosystem leadership emerges, how it is sustained, and how its forms and effects vary across geopolitical contexts.
Drawing on a programme of qualitative research across different geopolitical and institutional contexts, this workshop examines leadership as a relational and collective process involving entrepreneurs, support organizations and other ecosystem actors. It explores how actors build trust, negotiate different interests and mobilize collective action under varying conditions of institutional stability, resource availability and political uncertainty.
The workshop brings these insights together to develop a more contextualized understanding of ecosystem leadership and its role in ecosystem development and transformation. It also considers implications for supporting inclusive and sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems, alongside theoretical and methodological opportunities for future research.
Speaker: Associate Professor Aki Harima, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
Aki Harima is Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Head of the Entrepreneurship Research Group at Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech), Estonia. Her research examines entrepreneurial ecosystems, with particular emphasis on their evolution, leadership, and the conditions supporting inclusive and sustainable entrepreneurship. She also studies migrant and refugee entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education. Her work draws on qualitative research across diverse geopolitical and institutional contexts.
Before joining TalTech in 2024, she worked at the University of Bremen, Germany, where she completed her PhD in 2016. She currently leads an Estonian Research Council-funded project examining the digital and physical architecture of Estonia’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. She serves on the editorial boards of Entrepreneurship & Regional Development and The Journal of Technology Transfer and is a board member of the Nordic Conference on Small Business.
Discussion moderated by Prof. Arnis Sauka.
Attendance is free of charge.
Please sign up for the seminar, by writing to arnis.sauka@sseriga.edu by November 25, 2026.
The aim of the SSE Riga Open Workshop Series is to:
- Foster cooperation between business and management researchers, practitioners and policymakers, as well as
- Promote academic and applied research in various fields of the social sciences, focusing on but not limited to entrepreneurship, marketing, management, public administration, and strategy.
Organised by Professor Arnis Sauka, the Centre for Sustainable Business at SSE Riga