Beyond additivity: a Configurational Theory of university-ecosystem alignment for founder creation
研究了190所韩国大学中内部资源与外部生态系统的哪些组态能有效促进创始人产生，发现内部孵化资源与外部规模化及金融基础设施的协同是关键路径。
Universities exhibit significant heterogeneity in their capacity for founder creation – the generation of new ventures by faculty, students, and alumni. Traditional explanations often fail to capture the complex, non-linear dynamics inherent in the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE). While the EE perspective highlights systemic interdependence, it frequently remains descriptive, failing to specify the causal recipes necessary for high performance. This study integrates the EE perspective, viewed as a Complex Adaptive System, with configuration theory to model the alignment required for successful founder creation. We examined which configurations of internal university resources and external ecosystem attributes are sufficient for high founder emergence. Employing fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis on data from 190 South Korean universities, we identify one dominant synergistic pathway as the primary driver, while robustness checks reveal latent alternative configurations that emerge under specific contextual constraints, illustrating the underlying mechanism of equifinality. The findings reveal that high performance typically arises from the synergistic alignment of internal incubation resources with robust external scale-up and financial infrastructures, while also identifying configurations indicative of substitution effects, where certain strengths compensate for weaknesses elsewhere.