By Mackenzie White | Ivey Research Office | August 27, 2025
With support from a SSHRC Insight Development Grant, Dr. Laurel Steinfield is leading a four-country study to uncover how entrepreneurial ecosystems can better serve equity-deserving entrepreneurs. By bridging global insights with local realities, her work offers a roadmap for building more inclusive, responsive, and sustainable systems of support.
When Dr. Laurel Steinfield, F.W.P. Jones Faculty Fellowship & Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Sustainability at Ivey Business School, first began researching entrepreneurship, her focus was on the micro-level with subsistence entrepreneurs operating in informal markets in Southern and Eastern Africa. Her work was rooted in understanding how people navigate resource-scarce environments, often with little formal support.
But as she transitioned into teaching entrepreneurship in Canada, she recognized a gap – in her pedagogy and in the foundational understanding of how to build more inclusive formal environments for entrepreneurs. She explained that if she wanted to prepare students to be entrepreneurs or to support other entrepreneurs, then she needed to understand the real-world systems they’d be entering. That meant studying entrepreneurial ecosystems from the ground up.
That shift in perspective became the basis for her latest SSHRC-funded research project, a comparative four-country study titled Supporting Equity-Deserving Entrepreneurs: A Comparative Assessment of the Inclusive Supportiveness of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems. The project is extensive, but the mission is clear: to understand what’s working (and what isn’t) when it comes to supporting entrepreneurs who are often left on the margins, and what wise practices may be leveraged to help improve the inclusiveness of ecosystems.
Building Inclusive Ecosystems
Entrepreneurial ecosystems like Silicon Valley are designed to provide access to finance, talent, networks, and markets. But Steinfield notes that these ecosystems are often modeled on a privileged archetype: “Typically, they’re built for a ‘general entrepreneur,’ which in much of the literature defaults to a white, male entrepreneur with existing capital and connections.”
Her research flips the script by asking: What about equity-deserving entrepreneurs- those who have been historically marginalized due to factors like race, gender, socioeconomic status, or citizenship? Are they simply expected to fit into systems that weren’t designed for them? And if inclusive programs do exist, what can we learn from them?
Steinfield’s study spans South Africa, Colombia, Canada, and the United States, each chosen for its unique policy landscape and approach to entrepreneurship. South Africa, for example, has robust programming tied to racial and economic equity, while Colombia focuses heavily on immigrant entrepreneurship. Canada’s policies (particularly under the former Trudeau government) emphasize feminist economic development, and the U.S. boasts a dynamic but highly capital-driven startup culture.
Insights from the Field
With the South African portion of the study nearly complete, early insights are already beginning to emerge. One major area of exploration is financing. Many equity-deserving entrepreneurs (particularly those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds) struggle to access the kinds of loans or investment needed to scale beyond the startup phase. Traditional forms of collateral are often out of reach.
To counter this, some South African ecosystem actors are leveraging technology to gather alternative data that can de-risk loans. For example, entrepreneurs may be incentivized to share their financial data in real time, providing a digital footprint that can serve as a proxy for traditional collateral. “It’s a rethinking of due diligence,” says Steinfield. “They’re using transactional and sales data as a way to measure risk instead of demanding physical assets.”
Still, these innovative financing models tend to cluster in specific sectors, such as retail franchises or other replicable business formats, leaving entrepreneurs in more niche or less predictable sectors struggling for support.
Another key takeaway: there’s a missing link in the financing pipeline. Many entrepreneurs can bootstrap in the early days and perhaps even secure a grant, but few can access the kind of mid-stage funding needed to stabilize and grow. Venture capital isn’t always a fit, especially given its focus on rapid, exponential returns. “Most small and medium-sized businesses aren’t designed to be unicorns,” Laurel points out. “They just want to grow sustainably. But there’s a financing gap for those entrepreneurs who want to play it safe and still scale.” Laurel is hopeful that ‘zebras’ - which those in South Africa describe as ventures that seek to balance profitability (black strips) with meaningful, inclusive and sustainable impact (white stripes)- may be able to address this gap. Zebras, which can come in the form of ecosystem actors who are also financial capital entrepreneurs or ecosystem innovators, can channel resources from mainstream actors to those in need of innovative pathways. They act as ecosystem bridges and builders.
A New Generation, Disconnected
While financial constraints are a central theme, Steinfield has also uncovered an unexpected yet deeply prevalent barrier: generational disconnect.
“Younger entrepreneurs often feel alienated from the very support systems designed to help them,” she explains. Many report a mismatch between their needs and the guidance being offered. “They see these programs as run by the ‘Old Guard,’ who may have experience, but don’t understand the current landscape or the lived experience of youth navigating today’s markets, particularly as AI and technology rapidly change the landscape.”
As a result, some younger entrepreneurs are turning away from local support networks altogether, instead seeking mentorship, community, and funding from global or informal sources.
This disconnect is compounded by a common complaint: entrepreneurs are being “over-mentored and underfunded.” While they attend numerous programs and pitch competitions, they often walk away with advice but no tangible support. “Time is one of an entrepreneur’s most valuable assets,” Laurel says. “We need to stop wasting it on programs that don’t deliver meaningful outcomes.”
She sees a potential solution in emerging technologies like AI, which could help tailor support programs to meet individual needs, therefore reducing redundancy and increasing effectiveness.
Implications for Practice
While the study is still in its early stages, the practical implications are already clear. For those working in entrepreneurship policy, accelerator programs, or business development roles, Steinfield’s research offers a wake-up call: it’s time to rethink how we define entrepreneurial success- and who gets to pursue it.
“There’s this tension between scale and nuance,” she says. “Everyone wants scalable solutions, but if we ignore the diversity of entrepreneurs- in their identities, experiences, industries, and ambitions- then we end up designing systems that leave many behind.”
Her team is also in the process of mapping entrepreneurial actors in each of the four countries as case studies- identifying where support is concentrated, and where it’s lacking. Early trends suggest a heavy emphasis on mainstream finance options, accelerators and incubators, but far less infrastructure for post-acceleration support or long-term growth. “We’re trying to pinpoint where resources are over (or under) provisioned,” Steinfield explains, “and from there, identify wise practices that others can learn from.”
Collaboration and Impact
The research is a collaborative effort, involving scholars and practitioners across the four countries. In South Africa, Steinfield is working with Caren Scheepers and Motshedisi Mathibe; in Colombia, with Andres Barrios; and in Canada, with Joanna Buczkowska-McCumber, a practitioner with the W Venture Studio. An Ivey PhD student, Azure Cook, also joins the team to support the Canadian portion and will contribute their own research on gender and sexually-diverse entrepreneurs navigating stigma.
In each country, the team will produce White Papers aimed at informing policy and practice, as well as teaching case studies to be published through Ivey Publishing.
Ultimately, the goal is to contribute not only to academic knowledge but to real-world change. “This isn’t just a study,” Laurel emphasizes. “It’s a tool to help ecosystem actors reflect on their own practices and evolve toward inclusion.”
What’s Next?
As she moves into the next phase of the project, Laurel is preparing to begin interviews in Canada, followed by the United States. She encourages ecosystem actors and entrepreneurs interested in participating to reach out directly.
Looking ahead, she’s excited to deepen her work on gender lens investing, and to explore how different forms of financial, social, and cultural equity intersect in entrepreneurial spaces.
Through it all, she remains focused on a singular question: How do we build systems that serve the full spectrum of entrepreneurial talent?
“I want my work to contribute to a world where entrepreneurial support is more equitable and more effective,” she says. “Where we design systems not just for scale, but for people.”