‘Liquid city’ - The evolution of Porto’s cultural and creative entrepreneurial ecosystem

Porto changed from a hard to a liquid city, where traditions, new fluxes of culture and people try to coexist. Entrepreneurship became a strategic priority of policymakers in the territories where Porto is embedded, arguably motivated by economic recession. In entrepreneurial ecosystems, entrepreneurship is seen as a result from the interaction between entrepreneurs and the surrounding environment. Despite much attention has been given to the study of cultural and creative industry clusters, literature applying the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach to these sectors within a region is scarce. Earlier studies have been criticized for taking a static approach to the study of entrepreneurial ecosystems. The region of Porto has a long reputation as a strong cultural and creative cluster in the national context, an idea which became concrete with a study from 2008 promoted by Serralves. How has Porto’s cultural and creative entrepreneurial ecosystem evolved since 2008? This study analyzes the interactions between the main actors and factors of Porto’s cultural and creative entrepreneurial ecosystem and explains its evolutionary dynamics. This is done by the means of an embedded case study, with qualitative semi-structured interviews to entrepreneurs and experts, supported by quantitative data from multiple sources.