Dual-sided evolution: the Seoul ICT entrepreneurial ecosystem case

Research on entrepreneurial ecosystem evolution illuminates governance transitions but underspecifies the mechanisms that trigger them. Existing frameworks treat governance shifts as endogenous outcomes of ecosystem maturation, overlooking how political-institutional changes reconfigure the logic of state intervention. We theorize democratization as an institutional trigger that enables public-sector entrepreneurship to emerge, adapt under constraints, and specialize across ecosystem stages. Through longitudinal process tracing of Seoul’s ICT ecosystem (1987–2026), we demonstrate how democratization enables dual-pathway public-sector entrepreneurship: the state simultaneously mobilizes incumbents for infrastructure investment while creating policy flexibility for challenger firms. Our three-stage framework reveals: (1) Digital Democratization—state risk-taking in digital infrastructure and spinout-enabling policies; (2) Mobilization – the IMF crisis forces institutional entrepreneurship through novel hybrid organizations; (3) Globalization – the state progressively specializes interventions as knowledge spillovers become self-sustaining. We also establish boundary conditions: the mechanism operates where developmental state capacity meets technologically capable incumbents. This framework contributes to ecosystem evolution literature by theorizing political-institutional triggers, extends public-sector entrepreneurship scholarship by specifying how state capacity adapts across stages, and advances democratization research by revealing mechanisms linking political transitions to economic dynamism.