Sustainability of research-based ecosystem

The aim of the paper is to study sustainability of the research-based entrepreneurial ecosystem BioMed-Varna. The BioMed-Varna is focused on interdisciplinary research in Biomedical Image Analysis, Computational Life Sciences, and Neuroscience. Its main activities include multidisciplinary scientific research, educational projects, development of STEM practices and events/cases for educational institutions, promotion of innovation and entrepreneurial culture, and support for its members' scientific advancement. This paper investigates the development and performs a sustainability appraisal of the research-based entrepreneurial ecosystem using real-world data. The analysis applied by Social network analysis (SNA), reveals the participants' roles, activities and relationships. Using Key Point Indicators (KPIs) and network-based models, this research can support decisions about necessary changes in the ecosystem. Results can be implemented for running evaluation as well as for predictive sustainability assessment. The methodology can be transferred for further research on other regional ecosystems.