Mapping the entrepreneurship ecosystem scholarship: current state and future directions

The relevance of entrepreneurial ecosystems in fostering economic growth has led to a recent surge in scholarship on the topic. We investigate the literature to provide researchers with a bird’s-eye view extant entrepreneurial ecosystem research, with the goal of communicating the nature of the field and opportunities it presents. Specifically, we analyze 380 articles extracted from the Scopus database to reveal the structure of entrepreneurial ecosystem knowledge and determine the top contributors (authors, institutions, countries, journals, and articles). We identify key knowledge clusters and influential articles through methods including the cooccurrence of author’s keywords and PageRank analysis. The four identified knowledge clusters are: (1) configuration and crucial dimensions of entrepreneurial ecosystems, (2) entrepreneurship for sustainability and circular economy, (3) building an innovation-driven ecosystem, and (4) knowledge, technology, and commercialization. Finally, we advise aspiring researchers in the entrepreneurship arena to explore the numerous avenues into which they may invest their efforts.