The development of venture-capital-backed internet companies - An ecosystem perspective

The current paper uses an "environmental ecosystem" perspective to explore the development of the Internet sector. The findings suggest that different geographic regions possess different ecosystem qualities that benefit some Internet sectors and not others. For example, Internet hardware seems concentrated in northern California; Internet software in the Southwest; and some evidence that e-commerce and content is concentrated in the Rocky Mountains. We also found that the development of the Internet sector is iterative with Internet software companies developed first followed by Internet Infrastructure, Internet hardware, Internet service providers, and finally e-commerce companies. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.