Entrepreneurial Ecosystems as an Enabler of Technological Sovereignty: The Case of the Indian Short Form Video Market

This paper examines whether the geopolitical objective of technological sovereignty is attainable and enabled by entrepreneurial ecosystems, as both concepts aim to improve economic competitiveness. A qualitative single-case study of the Indian short-form video (SFV) market, which provides some of the most innovative business-to-consumer (B2C) digital applications, was conducted based on 20 stakeholder interviews and triangulated archival data. Numerous SFV start-ups were created in the city of Bangalore after a geopolitical incident that prompted the Indian government to ban comparable Chinese SFV apps, including TikTok. The research empirically demonstrates that the Bangalore entrepreneurial ecosystem facilitated technological sovereignty in three steps based on an input-process-output (IPO) model to enable the creation of these “sovereign” Indian SFV apps. Core of the theoretical enablement process is the adaptability of an entrepreneurial ecosystem to socio-political disruptions induced by geopolitical and geoeconomic objectives. This allows for ecosystem self-sustainment and triggers technological sovereignty as ecosystem response.