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We have started formulating and simulating the lifecycle of knowledge-driven (that would include technology-driven) ventures that can be viewed as the exercise of real options under regimes of risk and uncertainty that is modeled in the form of “happy accidents” namely, strategic knowledge serendipity, arbitrage and acquisition events that punctuate the process of the venture’s lifecycle. In practical terms, we find that the timing, selection and sequencing of key decisions pertaining to new venture formation and evolution are contingent in a non-linear manner to the breadth and depth as well as the quality and density of the network structure of the business and technology ecosystem within which a venture is situated. We find that up to a certain point of cultivating and nurturing the new firm’s “socio-economic” network, the costs outweigh the benefits but with an abrupt about-face once a critical mass in the scale, scope and quality of this “socio-economic” network or business and technology ecosystem is attained when the benefits start outweighing and exponentially exceeding the costs.

In this concluding chapter, the authors delve into the key conditions that typically epitomize a healthy ecosystem and the provision that entrepreneurial ecosystems can be observed as complex adaptive systems, where each element cannot be considered in isolation from the others. This lays the groundwork to design and formulate a cumulative knowledge and value-based theory of entrepreneurial ecosystems, which may in turn allow an appreciation of entrepreneurial ecosystems’ evolutionary paths, developing life cyles and evolving governance systems. While the chapter in this volume have collectively marked the path towards this direction, we look forward to seeing empirically grounded inquiries and case-based studies that are able to shape a more compelling and advanced dynamic understanding of entrepreneurial ecosystems.