Agile Leadership Models for Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in the Digital Economy

This paper examines the role of agile leadership models in shaping the functioning and performance of entrepreneurial ecosystems operating within the digital economy. Current literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems highlights the role of digital infrastructures, institutional coupling and innovation networks but offers little about how leadership practices are at work in increasingly networked, multi-actor environments. In addition, although agile leadership has been a subject of study primarily in intra-organizational settings, patterns of leadership at the ecosystem level remain undertheorized. To address this gap the research utilizes a qualitative-integrative approach consisting in an exploratory content synthesis methodology using web-based peer-reviewed literature and professional case-studies on digital entrepreneurship, ecosystem governance, as well as agile management. The research is informed by the question as to how agile leadership models relate to coordination, innovation and value co-creation in digitally-mediated entrepreneurial ecosystems.

The study delineates three mutually reinforcing leadership mechanisms by which ecosystems can respond to technological turbulence and institutional complexity: cognitive sense-making, relational coordination, and decentralized governance. The results demonstrate that the agile leadership contributes to ecosystem (i.e. network) resilience and innovation capability if it embraces distributed decision making, collective strategic narratives and learning-based collaboration among diverse or heterogeneous actors.

Our paper enlarges the boundaries of our understanding since we conceptualize agile leadership as a systemic capability, not yet generated in a systematic way in the extant literature on both leadership and entrepreneurial ecosystems. The findings have implications for ecosystem builders, educators and policy makers interested in designing governance and leadership systems that support entrepreneurial performance in the digital economy.