Entrepreneurship ecosystems and women entrepreneurs: a social capital and network approach Xaver Neumeyer & Susana C. Santos & António Caetano & Pamela Kalbfleisch Accepted: 15 December 2017 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract This study investigates the effects of venture typology, race, ethnicity, and past venture experience on the social capital distribution of women entrepreneurs in entrepreneurial ecosystems. Social network data from two municipal ecosystems in Florida, USA (Gainesville and Jacksonville), suggest that network connectivity and the distribution of social capital are significantly differ- ent for men and women entrepreneurs. This difference is contingent on the venture type. Male entrepreneurs show higher comparative scores of bridging social capital in aggressive- and managed-growth venture networks, while women entrepreneurs surpass their male counter- parts’ bridging capital scores in lifestyle and survival venture networks. Lastly, experienced women entrepre- neurs that self-identified as white showed a higher de- gree of network connectivity and bridging social capital in the entrepreneurial ecosystem than less experienced non-white female entrepreneurs. Implications for entrepre- neurship practice and new research paths are discussed. Keywords Women entrepreneurs . Entrepreneurial ecosystems . Social capital . Boundary conditions of social capital . Network analysis JEL classification L26 . L25 1 Introduction Entrepreneurial (eco)systems have become a popular topic of discussion among scholars and policy makers. These discussions have led to the development of different conceptualizations with a collection of interrelated parts. For example, Isenberg (2010) con- structs entrepreneurial ecosystems around nine elements such as cultural change and the reformation of regulatory frameworks. Neck et al. (2004) emphasize the importance of incubator organizations, universities, and support services to generate a constant flow of new ventures. Spigel (2017) and Stam (2015) have further built on these studies, detailing the function and linkage of each component. A commonly listed feature of all these ecosystem archetypes is their ability to support the formation of social capital between networks of stake- holders. Defined as the Bsum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institu- tionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and Small Bus Econ https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-018-9996-5 X. Neumeyer (*) University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Wilmington, NC, USA e-mail: neumeyerx@uncw.edu S. C. Santos Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA S. C. Santos : A. Caetano Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal A. Caetano Applied Psychology Research Center Capabilities & Inclusion (APPsy), Lisbon, Portugal P. Kalbfleisch University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, USA