Mapping the field of digital entrepreneurship: a topic modeling approach

Abstract

In the evolving landscape of entrepreneurship, digital technologies have ushered in new possibilities, attracting considerable academic attention. Despite the burgeoning research in Digital Entrepreneurship, the field remains fragmented, warranting a synthesized overview and structured research agenda. Consistently with the above, the paper presents a quantitative mapping of Digital Entrepreneurship through a bibliometric analysis of its publications. The research aims to address the need for a comprehensive, bibliometric overview of the topic, which has been echoed in recently published papers. In order to achieve this goal, we collected data from the Web of Science database, a common and scientifically sound choice in entrepreneurship research. The data were analyzed by applying Latent Dirichlet Allocation and topic modeling, thus providing a unique approach to bibliometric mapping. Topic modeling allows for the processing and analysis of significant amounts of scientific data, thus making it an ideal tool for bibliometric research. We find the field of Digital Entrepreneurship to be rather lively and in rapid development, with several publication outlets, affiliations, and countries contributing to it. We found four main topics to be extracted: the implications of Digital Entrepreneurship for innovation, Digital Entrepreneurship as an enabler for empowerment, the transformation of business models through digitalization, and the surge of digital platforms as entrepreneurial ecosystems. Additionally, we have provided a comprehensive overview of the theoretical lenses used amid the sample and a structured research agenda built upon extant gaps. From a theoretical perspective, the article serves as a starting point for future research on the topic and a comprehensive analysis of its present and past. From a practical perspective, the study is of interest to digital entrepreneurs willing to learn more about the opportunities and challenges provided by the digital landscape.