Empowering Micro-Entrepreneurs through Digital Services: A Bibliometric Review of Technology Tools and Future Research Agendas

In today’s fast-paced digital economy, micro-entrepreneurs increasingly rely on digital tools to keep their businesses running and growing. Despite this urgent digital transition, a comprehensive understanding of how academic research addresses this phenomenon remains fragmented. This paper maps the current literature using a bibliometric analysis of Scopus data to better understand how researchers are studying this trend. We break down what the academic community currently focuses on and what it frequently misses by applying co-citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence, and network mapping. Our results show a significant increase in research on digital tools, mobile applications, and cloud-based services for micro-entrepreneurs. However, this research is geographically skewed toward developing economies. The top three countries with high citations are the UK, India and the United States, while the highest number of publications is dominated by India, South Africa and the United States, respectively. Despite the growing body of work, significant gaps remain. We still know very little about the long-term impact of technology on a micro-enterprise’s survival and do not even understand how local ecosystems drive technology adoption in the first place. This study provides a direct roadmap for scholars, policymakers, and industry practitioners looking to build better support systems for microentrepreneurs globally by identifying these blind spots.