Digital Entrepreneurship As A Driver of Ecosystem Reconfiguration: Systemic Perspective From Southeast Asia

Abstract

Digital entrepreneurship is increasingly central to economic transformation in emerging economies, yet innovation ecosystem scholarship has not fully explained how digitally enabled ventures reshape ecosystem structures and coordination in developing contexts. Southeast Asia provides a distinctive setting where rapid digitalization intersects with uneven infrastructure and diverse institutional arrangements that condition ecosystem evolution. This study examines how digital entrepreneurship drives the reconfiguration of innovation ecosystem structures and coordination mechanisms in Southeast Asia. The research employs a qualitative comparative case study design across selected Southeast Asian contexts that vary in institutional coherence and digital infrastructure maturity. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with key ecosystem actors and triangulated with documentary sources such as policy materials, industry reports, and platform and organizational records. The unit of analysis is the innovation ecosystem, with embedded attention to digital ventures, platform actors, intermediaries, and relevant public and private institutions. Data were analyzed using a systemic analytical framework integrating institutional theory, platform economics, and innovation ecosystem analysis to trace changes in roles, interdependencies, governance practices, and coordination routines. The results show that digital entrepreneurship reconfigures ecosystems by redistributing roles and interdependencies while shifting coordination toward platform-mediated governance that varies by institutional and infrastructural conditions. The study concludes that ecosystem transformation in Southeast Asia is pathway-dependent, shaped by the interaction of institutions, infrastructure, and entrepreneurial platform-based coordination rather than by startup activity alone. It contributes a cohesive systemic explanation that advances understanding of ecosystem reconfiguration in emerging economies by integrating structural change and coordination governance within a single framework.