A new Ecosystem Health Check for your Startup Community

In essence, an entrepreneurial ecosystem is the dynamic mix of visible and invisible elements that coincide and which together create the environment in which entrepreneurs launch and grow their businesses. However, how we measure the quality and impact of both visible and invisible elements has been a great challenge. But there is an old wisdom that only things that are understood can be developed and only things that can be measured can be improved.

Our Ecosystem Health Toolkit is a self-serving tool that includes a self-serving online KPI dashboard to be filled by local ecosystem professionals as well as an extensive user guide including two cases where the tool has been put into action (Cologne Germany and Guatemala City). We also provide a theoretical framework, that provides the reasoning and logic our tool is based on. 

End-users are empowered to use the toolkit to source data in their home ecosystems, enter them in an interactive dashboard and based on the outcomes, identify recommended fields of action

The tool’s strength is that it can be used by professionals on the ground. It was our objective to develop a practical and easy-to-use tool that empowers local ecosystem builders and help them in their work by focusing on gaining validated learnings to check if an entrepreneurial ecosystem project is on the right path to achieving systemic growth and development. The framework is based on four dimensions, each having two metrics that ecosystem builders can connect with the data they have available or find most important for their ecosystem. The tool is suitable for both, early stage and more mature ecosystems, in both, emerging and developed economies.

The most important question was: How can the toolkit be simple, yet accurate and helpful for practitioners

At the core of the concept is the Ecosystem Nutrition Cycle that shows how entrepreneurs are able to create more value based on the framework conditions they face. Is there strong startup support that catches failing business and makes their knowledge available for future ventures? Is there a culture and social capital to support open exchange and collaboration? Do regulators and policy makers create a favourable setting for serial entrepreneurs to re-invest and grow new companies?

While the tool does not have pre-set answers, it guides local ecosystem builders through the process of asking the right questions and selecting suitable metrics to measure progress in the local setting.

The result is a powerful KPI dashboard, which can be regularly filled by ecosystem builders, e.g. on a half-year basis, to track their startup scene’s progress.

With the toolkit, ecosystem builders will be able – based on the mandate of all key actors – to implement strategic alignment and policy development as well as mobilise investments towards sectors of the ecosystem that ought to be developed.

To start your own ecosystem KPI dashboard, you can download the toolkit below and create a copy for yourself.

*Startup Heatmap Europe –now called DEEP Ecosystems– is a non-profit organization that aims at facilitating interaction between ecosystem builders, interested in creating an attractive startup environment in the European Union.