Entrepreneurial Spawning in Turbulent Times: Evidence from the Decline of Nokia in Finland

Prior research suggests that a single firm can have substantial influence on the development of a region. Working for a large corporation alerts individuals to new technological developments and equips them with relevant skills and industry-specific information. Entrepreneurial entry may thus have appealed to the large number of high-skilled knowledge workers laid off in the organizational restructuring surrounding the acquisition of Nokia’s Devices & Services business in April 2014. To date, however, the impact of Nokia’s collapse on the Finnish start-up scene has not been studied empirically. This paper investigates whether the incident sparked off increased entrepreneurial activity in the affected Finnish regions and thereby intensified the formation of entrepreneurial clusters in Finland.