Revealing preferential circulation—how the use of places serves localized entrepreneurs’ capabilities

Abstract With the aim of fostering innovation, many cities have promoted places to provide resources for entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, little work has been done to determine how these resources are mobilized by entrepreneurs, and how a collection of places in a given city-region can support their efforts. In this article, we argue that entrepreneurs attend different resource-producing places, and that the pattern thus drawn, called preferential circulation, reveals the ongoing entrepreneurial process. Based on network theory, we offer an original concept to better understand how cities can support entrepreneurial dynamics and suggest new insights for local innovation policy design.