A New Player Joins the Game: Development Organizations and their Impact on the Egyptian Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

Sammanfattning: Background: While entrepreneurship is now seen as an important focus in Egypt to elevatepoverty and improve the economic status, a strong and coherent entrepreneurialecosystem is necessary to achieve this. The Egyptian ecosystem is lacking a lotof principal elements such as access to finance, proper entrepreneurialeducation, and a culture that supports entrepreneurship. Developmentorganizations, whose aim is to sustainably develop the society, have recentlyjoined the Egyptian entrepreneurial ecosystem, equipped with funding,knowledge, and capacity. They aim to contribute to the Egyptian entrepreneurialecosystem and support entrepreneurship as a mean for sustainable development. Purpose: Despite their promising role, development organizations have not beenemphasized in the literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems. This could bereturned to the fact that most of the research on ecosystems is done in the contextof developed countries. Our aim is to shed light on the new role of developmentorganizations in the Egyptian ecosystem, explore what they offer toentrepreneurs, understand their impact, and analyze how they can improve theecosystem further. Method: The study is conducted through a multiple case study approach. Data is collectedthrough in-depth interviews with 21 employees and entrepreneurs from 3different development organizations in Egypt Conclusion: The results show that development organizations have a massive impact on theentrepreneurial ecosystem in Egypt. On the Isenberg model, developmentorganizations have the highest impact on market, support, and finance. Whilethey already impact culture and human capital, more emphasis needs to be puton these two domains to improve the mindset of entrepreneurs and the differentplayers in the ecosystem. Development organizations do not contribute to thepolicy domain since its mostly dominated by the government.