Emergence of entrepreneurial populations: a feature dimensionality approach

This paper studies how increasing dimensionality in a market space feeds into the emergence of a sustainable entrepreneurial population—energy cooperatives in Germany. Our theoretical model conceptualizes the market as a multi-dimensional feature space and offers insights as to when and where new types of entrepreneurial activities emerge. We demonstrate that (1) the rise of a socio-cognitive dimension greenness created novel social demand and opened opportunities for sustainable entrepreneurship and (2) sustainable entrepreneurial organizations are more likely to be founded in communities with higher local demand for greenness. Our paper contributes to research on entrepreneurial population emergence and sustainable entrepreneurship.