Do entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) facilitate entrepreneurial activity at every stage of the entrepreneurial lifecycle? The answer to this question is not straightforward. Building new space for EE theory, we examine how the combination of EE quality and city global connectedness (alpha, beta, gamma, and sufficiency cities) shapes nascent, emergent, and extreme growth stages of entrepreneurial activity. We apply fixed effects in the generalized least squares estimation to data on 803 cities globally to examine the direct and indirect effects of city type, EE quality and their interaction on three stages of entrepreneurship. Our findings demonstrate that entrepreneurship activity at every stage benefits from an increased quality of EE elements, while emergent and nascent stages of entrepreneurship are most conducive in globally connected (alpha-type) cities. Different external forces and internal capabilities of entrepreneurs at different stages may or may not result in synergetic effects of EE quality and city global connectedness on entrepreneurial activity.
