Creativity skills in entrepreneurship education: A bibliometric analysis of research trends, thematic clusters, and pedagogical gaps (2016–2025)

Creativity is recognized as a foundational competency in entrepreneurship, yet how this skill is specifically researched, taught, and measured in entrepreneurship education is still understood in a fragmented manner. This study aims to map the landscape of knowledge on creativity skills in entrepreneurship education to identify research trends, thematic structures, and fundamental pedagogical gaps. Bibliometric analysis was conducted on 82 Scopus-indexed articles (2016–2025) using VOSviewer for network mapping and RStudio with the bibliometrix package for performance and thematic evolution analysis. The findings reveal a consistent, though non-linear, growth in publications, with more than half concentrated in 2023–2025, with the largest contributions from Spain, Indonesia, and China. Seven thematic clusters on creativity and entrepreneurial intention, entrepreneurship curriculum development, innovation and skills training, higher education sustainability pedagogy, and entrepreneurship education practices were identified. The change of the discourse from creativity and innovation (2017-2021) to entrepreneurship education practices and design thinking (2022-2024) was followed by a consolidation around higher education, entrepreneurship education, and self-efficacy in 2025. The identified critical gaps include the limited number of longitudinal studies, the minimal representation of cross-cultural contexts, and, most fundamentally, evidence-based learning models designed to develop creativity skills in entrepreneurship courses, which appear underexplored within the analysed corpus. This appears to be one of the first bibliometric studies specifically mapping the intersection of creativity skills and entrepreneurship education, providing an empirical basis for the development of innovative learning models that bridge the gap between the psychological construct of creativity and pedagogical implementation in entrepreneurship education.