To give a straightforward understanding of the Romanian entrepreneurial ecosystem, we created an index which will be henceforth referred to as „Romanian Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Index” (REEI). We based it on the methodology provided by Endeavor Insight, a non-profit organization dedicated to high-impact entrepreneurship, with remarkable research insights into the South-American entrepreneurial ecosystems.

The value of REEI is 4.5 on a scale from 0 to 10, and it reached its maximum value at 8. It is a cumulated measure of the achievements of 5 key-measures: ‘inspiration’, ‘consultancy’, ‘work experience as an employee’, ‘mentorship’ and ‘investment’. 

Starting from the triggers for developing entrepreneurship identified by Endeavor Insight, we measured each dimension on a scale from 0 to 2 by an online survey for entrepreneurs.

• INSPIRATION: We noted with ‘0’ when the respondents declared that they haven’t been inspired, with 1 for the cases where they have been inspired by the 3F, family, friends and with 2 for the inspiration given by a previous employer, educator or anybody who might be considered to belong to the larger entrepreneurial ecosystem rather than entrepreneur’s proximity.
• CONSULTANCY: We marked 0 for none, 1 for informal consultancy and 2 for formal consultancy.
• WORK EXPERIENCE: Lacking ‘previous working experience’ was marked with 0, 1 stood for experience up to 5 years, and 2 for more than 10 years working experience.
• MENTORSHIP: it was marked by 0 if they do not advise others to become entrepreneurs, with 1 if they sometimes do and 2 if they definitely inspire other into entrepreneurship.
• INVESTMENT: Investment in others’ business was marked by 2, starting up of other personal business was marked by 1 and no investment by 0.

In order to better understand the entrepreneurial environment we divided the EEI in two components:

• the input component, consisting of inspiration, consultancy and work experience
• the output or impact component, which consists of mentorship and investment.

In this way, looking at the input dimension of the REE we may understand how conducive is the environment for creating entrepreneurs, while looking at the impact dimension we see how mature and healthy the ecosystem is, by generating more businesses, investments, and inspiring others. REE’s input ranges from 0 to 6 and marks 3, while REE’s impact ranges from 0 to 4, and it has its middle and most frequent value at 1, which is much too low for generating business.