Entrepreneurship and Digitalization. A Review of the Highly Cited Literature in the Research Area of Business Economics

The paper explores the relationship between entrepreneurship and digitalization, as outlined by the scientific literature, aiming to analyse the highly cited papers in the area, indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) database. The paper is based on desk research, focusing on both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Using WoS generated reports, the quantitative analysis of the highly cited papers in the area of “entrepreneurship and digitalization” outlines the most relevant authors (Parida Vinit, Nambisan Satish and Wincent Joakim), the most prolific years of publication (2021 and 2020), the most important academic institutions (Lulea University of Technology and University of Vaasa), countries (the United States of America) and publishing houses (Elsevier). The qualitative analysis puts forward key research topics, that can be classified into four main categories, each with its specific themes: digitalization’s impact on the business environment; digital entrepreneurship and digital ecosystems; new business models in the digital era; SMEs in the context of digitalization. This also outlines the employed research methods in the reviewed highly cited papers – the most common referring to quantitative, qualitative, mixed, and secondary data analysis – as well as the main entities that were subject to investigation, among which, very frequent were SMEs, start-ups and large companies. Approaching literature review-related studies on “entrepreneurship and digitalization” in a novel way, by tackling only highly cited papers in WoS, the paper sets guidelines for future research.