Building sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems: A holistic approach

Abstract

Growing interest in entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) over the last 15 years has led to an increase in publications in academic journals. This new concept has become a central topic in entrepreneurship research; however, it remains atheoretical, static and broad. While several bibliometric and systematic literature reviews have developed a research agenda for EEs, a holistic framework that integrates sustainability factors with theories, methods and approaches is still needed. This study provides such a framework through a bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review of high-quality contributions in this field. The results of a citation and network analysis using the co-occurrence, co-authorship, bibliographic coupling, and co-citation techniques, highlight the state of the art of research and distinguish three thematic clusters in the EE literature. A holistic framework is then developed by integrating sustainability factors into the EE literature, and several emerging directions for future research are highlighted.