Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in entrepreneurial activity across emerging economies, reshaping how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) identify opportunities, mobilise resources and participate in innovation ecosystems. Yet existing work remains fragmented, with limited attention to how AI interacts with contextual features such as institutional voids, infrastructural constraints and policy experiments that characterise emerging economies. This study conducts a bibliometric and systematic literature review (BSLR) to map the intellectual structure and thematic evolution of research at the intersection of AI, entrepreneurship and innovation, and develops a multi-level conceptual framework that explains how AI operates as a cognitive, organisational and institutional actor within entrepreneurial ecosystems in these contexts. Synthesising 100 peer-reviewed articles published between 2017 and 2025, the article identifies four interrelated thematic domains: AI-augmented entrepreneurial cognition and decision-making; digitally mediated venture formation and learning processes; adaptive ecosystem structures, skills and resource orchestration; and institutional governance of intelligent technologies. The framework shows how AI-enabled tools can help entrepreneurs navigate uncertainty, extend their reach into digital markets and experiment with new business models, while also raising substantive concerns about algorithmic exclusion, bias and dependence on external platforms that constitute new forms of institutional inequality in emerging economy ecosystems. The study additionally identifies three emergent thematic frontiers requiring dedicated future inquiry: agentic AI and autonomous entrepreneurial action, AI and sustainability-oriented innovation, and ethical and responsible AI governance in resource-constrained regulatory environments. By situating AI-augmented entrepreneurship within the specific resource, relational and institutional conditions of emerging economies, the article contributes to debates on institutional evolution, regional development, and sustainable and inclusive innovation. It offers implications for policymakers, ecosystem builders and support organisations on how to design AI-related policies, infrastructures and capacity-building initiatives that strengthen local entrepreneurial ecosystems rather than deepen existing disparities, and outlines a future research agenda to examine these dynamics empirically across diverse emerging-country settings.
Muhammad Salman Shabbir (Tue,) studied this question.