Keizo Mizuno (p), Keiichi Hori

Grétar Eyþórsson

This paper analyzes the strategic effects of bundling in an environment where an entrant can obtain information on its productivity for producing a good in one market by entering a related market due to knowledge spillovers. We show that the practice of bundling by an incumbent can preserve its monopoly position by preventing an entrant's information acquisition. It is also shown that such a practice of bundling aggravates social welfare. In addition, we consider the case where an incumbent has private information on its productivity. In that case, when there is no knowledge spillover, the incumbent accommodates entry in one market to extract rent by taking advantage of its monopoly position in another market. However, when there are knowledge spillovers, the privately informed incumbent practices bundling to deter entry by preventing the entrant's information acquisition.

Sanna Savolainen (p), Hirvonen-Kantola Sari, Ahokangas Petri

Keizo Mizuno

ABSTRACT
This paper focuses on business ecosystem development and public financing influence on development work in the Oulu region. Based on an in-depth qualitative analysis of eleven ISS (internationalization support service) organizations and eight SMEs, tentative findings reveal that various development tools of ISS organizations and publicly financed project actions have strengthened new international businesses and increased export activities for SMEs, affected positively regional growth and developed and tightened business ecosystem work on Oulu region. The analysis indicates weaknesses in regional cooperation and decision-making and ambiguity in regional cooperation with organizations and SMEs. Also, the paper presents suggestions for future planning and needs for future financing and development work for the Oulu region's business ecosystem development. This paper contributes to the extant literature by being one of the first studies to specifically highlight public financing influence on regional development, decision-making, and SME support services.

There are opportunities for future decision-making and development work to use this paper's results for more open, comprehensive, and confidential decision-making on long-term planning and business ecosystem development on regional and national levels. In addition, tentative findings increase knowledge and understanding of regional development for developing organizations and export-oriented SMEs. Moreover, this paper is one of the few regional business ecosystem studies highlighting the role of development work and public financing influence on the regional level, sharing knowledge of SMEs' key persons and the leaders of regional development organizations, and publicly financed services.

Joseph Bahati Mukulu (p)

Sanna Savolainen

Entrepreneurship is one of the growth and development strategies for policy-makers in different countries and regions. The literature recognizes entrepreneurship as a socio-geographical phenomenon since the geographical context shapes the individuals’ entrepreneurial activities by influencing their attitudes, aspirations, intentions, risk perception, etc. Although entrepreneurship is geographically rooted, some external factors and actors influence its performance. This impact increases with the rise of globalization, which brings structural changes and makes actors interconnected. Internal and external factors act together as an “ecosystem”. The Entrepreneurial Ecosystem (EE) concept is borrowed from biology and emerges from micro-interactions in a bubble-up mechanism to foster firms’ formation and productive entrepreneurship. There is a growing interest in entrepreneurial ecosystem literature. From the literature desk review, one can draw three mains piece of information: Firstly, EE is an endogenous phenomenon since it is self-building. Second, EE is dynamic since elements and linkages change continuously. Third, the heterogeneity in the EE’s composition since each place creates its own ecosystem. This heterogeneity results from the local context and degree of openness and interaction with foreign countries. Although this topic remains in its infancy, the extant empirical studies focused on EE formation, comparing EEs, and the EE and productive entrepreneurship linkages. To our knowledge, no study has analyzed the EEs linkages. Despite the spatial interconnectedness of countries, the extant literature on EE addressed EEs as siloed. This study aims to fill this gap by investigating how EEs are interconnected and influence each other. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we aim to delve deeper the EE’s measure suggested by Leendertse et al. (2021) by including the social capital dimension. This is relevant since developing countries, especially African countries, are characterized by institutional voids and informal linkages. Second, we will expand the empirical literature by analyzing the linkages between EEs. Data will come from several databases, including QOG, WES, GEM, Doing Business report, RCI, etc. Three technics will serve to process data: (1) the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to measure the EE; (2) the Network Analysis to identify how different EEs are interlinked, the structure and the density of the network; (3) the Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) to deepen the Network Analysis results by checking whether African EEs display polarization. Since we will have panel data, we will use the panel unit root test to test the co-integration of the series and the CIPS to check the order of integration.

Grétar Eyþórsson (p)

Joseph Bahati Mukulu

The paper proposed is based on data from the Nordic research project Value Chains and Resilient Coastal Communities in the Nordic Atlantic, financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers.
In the paper I show my investigation of social and economic development in the two fishing towns of Siglufjörður and Ólafsfjörður in north Iceland, primarily after the year 2000. I will look at how these two communities, which faced great changes when they were amalgamated as the municipality of Fjallabyggð in 2006, took different economic development trajectories. How the people of the two fishing towns managed to adapt to major changes initiated by the state authorities and later by private entrepreneur initiative with great investments in tourism and biotechnology. These changes occurred in the context of a road tunnel being constructed between the two towns in in 2010. Statistical official data are used to show the development, but the main empirical data is twofold: 1. A web-survey conducted among approximately 300 people in February 2021. The focus was on how the people of the two towns perceived these developments. 2. In-depth interviews with key persons in the community as well as focus group meeting with people.
An underlying question is how all the efforts to develop the community are seen by the people in these towns and to try to evaluate to what extent they have been resilient and will continue to grow in the future.