Although structural constraints, such as political instability, corruption, and conflict, impair the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems, research suggests that individuals involved in entrepreneurship may be capable of overcoming such impediments. This contradiction challenges our understanding of how entrepreneurial ecosystems can develop in contexts facing severe structural constraints, including fragile, violent conflict areas. To address this challenge, I draw on an in-depth qualitative study of Iraq’s emergent entrepreneurial ecosystem. I find that Iraq’s entrepreneurial ecosystem developed as collective emancipation by enabling individual emancipation through entrepreneurship of young Iraqis from their otherwise predictable future and modeling such process to fit the collective aim. My study details the mechanisms involved in this process of collective entrepreneurial emancipation. By doing so, my work adds to the scholarly understanding of entrepreneurial ecosystems and the emancipatory power of entrepreneurship.
