Confluence of sustainable entrepreneurship, innovation, and digitalization in SMEs

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has been the focus of business research because of its ability to drive positive change and increase resilience in the economy. Sustainable entrepreneurship is the latest approach that links traditional entrepreneurship with triple-bottom-line principles and has gained institutional support since the UN approved the “2030 Development Agenda.” However, the field of sustainable entrepreneurship is relatively new and continually evolving, with an ongoing debate about its definition, boundaries, and drivers. A model was designed using different estimation techniques, to explore how SMEs and start-ups can adopt long-term sustainability, innovation, and digitalization strategies. This study used data from the Flash Eurobarometer 486 gathered through interviews with 16.365 SMEs in the EU27 and 12 non-EU countries. The findings show that most entrepreneurs do not express interest in a pro-growth agenda, which limits the reach of pro-entrepreneurship and pro-innovation discourse. Furthermore, firms’ youth affect sustainability, not innovation and digitalization dynamics.