Digital Entrepreneurship: Theoretical Foundations, Methods, and Trends

This study seeks to provide a comprehensive and integrative review of the literature on digital entrepreneurship. Based on a systematic approach, this review portrays literature trends, integrates prevailing literature approaches, and suggests an agenda for future research on digital entrepreneurship. The strict research protocol employed led to the identification of 186 articles on digital entrepreneurship. The descriptive analysis depicts the main trends of the literature on digital entrepreneurship. The critical review, based on a subsample of 59 highly influential articles that allows for deriving meaningful insights, groups the articles based on their methodologies (theoretical studies, empirical qualitative studies, empirical quantitative studies, and empirical mixed methods studies) and systematizes the prevailing approaches of the literature on digital entrepreneurship. For each group of articles, a conceptual framework that provides a fine-grained understanding of each of the prevailing approaches that constitute high-influential research on digital entrepreneurship is devised. The insights stemming from the comprehensive in-depth analysis were integrated and an integrative framework that bridges the prevailing approaches identified, thus aiding in structuring the knowledge on digital entrepreneurship, is devised. Finally, based on the comprehensive and integrative review undertaken, promising paths to further knowledge on digital entrepreneurship, and implications for theory, policy, and managerial practice are stated.