Are we speaking the same language? Using topic models to shed light on research utilization issues between entrepreneurial ecosystem scholars and policy-makers

There is near universal agreement in the literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems that ecosystems are heterogeneous in nature (Brown and Mason, 2017), and that failure to recognise this within policy making circles may lead to suboptimal policy decision-making (Stam and Bosma, 2015). There are ongoing concerns, however, that policy makers may not be getting the message, and that policy is running ahead of research in the field of regional development with regard to the role of entrepreneurship and ecosystems thinking (Wurth, Stam and Spigel, 2021). This study employs topic modelling to establish the dominant themes in the academic literature on a series of case study ecosystems, and the themes which characterise the policy discourse within these ecosystems. Through a comparison between the respective academic and policy-based discourses, we establish the extent to which the academic themes are reflected in the policy discourse on a place-by-place basis.