Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Digital platforms have become a primary coordination medium within rural entrepreneurial ecosystems (REE), performing functions that geographic remoteness and institutional thinness make unavailable through place-based interaction alone. This thesis examines how they complement and extend traditional coordination structures, with particular attention to the Swedish rural context. Existing entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) research has primarily focused on urban contexts and place-based forms of coordination, where entrepreneurship depends heavily on physical proximity, dense institutional support, and face-to-face interaction. However, rural ecosystems are often characterised by geographic dispersion, structural thinness, and limited formal support, creating different conditions for entrepreneurial coordination. In this context, digital platforms enable rural entrepreneurs to access markets, resources, knowledge, and networks beyond their immediate local environment. Despite their growing importance, the role of digital platforms as a coordination medium within REEs remains underexplored.
The findings show that digital platforms do not replace place-based coordination but rather complement and extend it. Entrepreneurs use platforms for visibility, market access, knowledge exchange, operational coordination, and maintaining relationships across geographic distance. At the same time, trust, legitimacy, and community embeddedness continue to depend heavily on local face-to-face interaction and informal social networks. The study identifies a form of hybrid coordination in which digitally mediated and locally embedded interactions coexist and support one another. It further introduces the concept of digitally mediated proximity to explain how relational closeness can be sustained through digital interaction despite geographic dispersion.
The thesis contributes to EE theory by challenging spatially bounded assumptions and conceptualising digital platforms not merely as support tools but as active coordination medium within rural ecosystems. Empirically, the study provides insight into how rural entrepreneurs navigate structural thinness by combining local embeddedness with digitally extended networks. The findings contribute to a broader understanding of how entrepreneurial ecosystems function in a rural context.