A Bibliometric Analysis on Pay-per-Click as an Instrument for Digital Entrepreneurship Management Using VOSviewer and SCOPUS Data Analysis Tools

Abstract

Network data maps constitute a practical visual data-classification tool in structuring complex research literature endowed with multiple economic, social, and psychological relationships, as happens with the evolution of digital entrepreneurship as a research topic in the COVID-19 era. Has the digitalization process, accelerated by COVID-19, influenced entrepreneurship by strengthening digital entrepreneurship worldwide? Is innovation the most-cited keyword in the digital entrepreneurship-related literature published in the SCOPUS database from 2001 onwards? Does pay-per-click as an instrument for digital entrepreneurship management foster sustainable development? To answer these questions, we combine a software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks, VOSviewer version 1.6.18, with the SCOPUS bibliographic data tool to investigate the keyword ‘digital entrepreneurship.’ As a result, we obtained 2154 documents in the SCOPUS database for 2001–2022 in all 27 subject areas, of which 1055 documents were from BMA (Business, Management, and Accounting) and EEF (Economics, Econometrics, and Finance) areas. Regarding the keyword ‘pay-per-click,’ we obtained 63 papers for 2005–2022 from BMA and EEF subject areas. We find that there is a growing interest in researching digital entrepreneurship led by authors from the European Union and followed by the United States; innovation is the most-cited keyword in documents related to digital entrepreneurship, and researchers worldwide are giving more importance to the process of digitalization compared to the link between educational, economic, and technological factors and digital entrepreneurship. Regarding ‘pay-per-click,’ we find that the literature published on this topic is broadly based on the US, and given the small number of publications on this issue, it is a research area with great potential to investigate and publish about it.

1. Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant structural changes in societies and firms with a modification, in many cases, to the way of working. The improvement in ICTs (information and communication technologies) and the greater capillarization of the Internet to reach remote places, as well as the increasing speed with the installation of fiber optic cabling and the development of 5G, have led to a growth in work to distance, which has strengthened digital entrepreneurship.

Furthermore, the pandemic also brought the recharge of startups and different platforms working before the pandemic to boost them [1], redesigning entrepreneurial processes [2] and others, as in the Amazon case, endowed with impressive efficiency growth, accelerating delivery to satisfy clients’ needs during confinement at home. Along the same lines, Walmart, Cornershop, and other well-known companies, as well as other startups with the same formula, made goals in their finances for the extraordinary profits they achieved. Further, digital transformation could be connected with new perspectives on product forecasting and product innovation [3]. Therefore, a generation of new and other renewed companies has emerged to use digital technology in conjunction with entrepreneurship and innovation [4] to revolutionize our lifestyles today on a global base. In addition, this kind of digital transformation in companies brings new perspectives about DEEs (Digital Entrepreneurial Ecosystems) [5] in our societies and new research frameworks about these related concepts.

On the other hand, SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure) is looked at with new eyes as an opportunity to connect with digital entrepreneurship. Recent research on SDG 9 [6] showed that only 2% of participation of publications have worked with it. In that report, SDG 9 is the second-least worked on SDG of the 17 goals on the list. In this way, sustainability and digital entrepreneurship require being looked at through new lenses. In this sense, fostering innovation linked to digital entrepreneurship creates sustainable enterprises, increases social wealth and equality, and reduces economic gaps in society [7].

Based on a comprehensive literature analysis of scientific publications related to digital entrepreneurship, particularly from 2001 to 2022, this paper aims to analyze how digital entrepreneurship as a conceptual item has attracted researchers worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed entrepreneurial policies worldwide, especially investments, which has attracted researchers on topics linked to Industry 4.0. Among them, pay-per-click as an instrument for digital entrepreneurship management emerges as a topic that has barely been studied in the entrepreneurship-related literature, as only a few papers have been published in Scopus on different aspects of this issue. Given these premises, we pose the following research questions (RQs).

RQ 1.

Has the digitalization process, accelerated by COVID-19, influenced entrepreneurship by strengthening digital entrepreneurship worldwide?

RQ 2.

Is innovation the most-cited keyword in the digital entrepreneurship-related literature published in the SCOPUS database from 2001 onwards?

RQ 3.

Does pay-per-click, as an instrument for digital entrepreneurship management, foster sustainable development?

To accomplish this goal and to answer these RQs, the authors will analyze all documents published in the SCOPUS database by combining VOSviewer version 1.6.18, a software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks [8], and the SCOPUS bibliographic data tool for the keyword ‘digital entrepreneurship.’ In this way, we have a holistic view of the term, both in its conceptualization and evolution over time, regardless of the institutional affiliation and the countries where the authors are located, giving us a more objective and realistic view of the concept analyzed.

The structure of the paper is as follows. First, a literature review will be compiled on digital entrepreneurship. Second, the methodology used will be described, and the Results and Discussion section will be shown based on bibliometric analysis. Third, some conclusions with their theoretical and managerial applications will be presented. Finally, some limitations and future research will be conducted.

2. Literature Review

Primarily during this post-COVID-19 era, mainly linked to remote work and ICTs (information and communication technologies), firms compete in the digital age in many areas and sectors, and entrepreneurship is no exception. Digital entrepreneurship causes less-bounded entrepreneurial processes and outcomes and a less-predefined locus of entrepreneurial agency [9]. The expansion of new market niches driven by digital entrepreneurship strengthens organizations by satisfying the needs of new consumers. By having a more significant number of productive resources, companies that carry out this type of venture are encouraged to carry out policies based on CSR, which creates positive externalities for the population and avoids agency problems.

Organizations, especially born globals, must accelerate 5G-based technological implementation and diffusion to increase efficiency and productivity by searching for intrapreneurs and adopting entrepreneurial policies to foster welfare and business growth. This fact makes it imperative for these organizations to use all available contemporary administrative methods enabling them to do so [2,10]. In this sense, digital entrepreneurship helps the organization focus its vision and priorities on responding to environmental changes around the firm to ensure that organizational members are working towards achieving the same goal [11]. Therefore, radical changes linked to digital entrepreneurship mean increased speed, changing processes, adopting new business models, or saving resources [12,13], which attracts the interest of researchers on this topic. As a result of all the above, we propose

Proposition 1.

There is a growing interest in researching digital entrepreneurship during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Digital entrepreneurship goes hand in hand with innovation, the death of long-established businesses, and the emergence of new, wild, and radical companies [14]. The digital revolution, also called industry 3.0 (after the steam engine and the assembly line), is the harbinger of the fourth stage of development to create industry 4.0 [15,16] and high technologies communicating with each other, partly called the IoT (Internet of Things) [17]. As a result, countries generate first-order or higher-rank competitive advantages by implementing state-of-the-art technology for profit. As a result, leadership, efficiency, and productivity are strengthened due to reducing chaordism, defined by corporate policies and strategies that combine chaos and order in organizations [18].

Further, digital entrepreneurship is especially appealing to prospective entrepreneurs studying at HEIs (higher education institutions) [19], as digital entrepreneurial education on entrepreneurial behavior fosters entrepreneurial intention [20]. Entrepreneurs face significant challenges linked to ’glocalization´ (think global, act local), so implementing a deep digitalization process in their firms can be considered a helpful managerial tool to deal with them successfully. Digital entrepreneurial education is also linked to innovation, which fosters digital entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurs design and implement new business models linked to absorbing technology [21]. This strategy related to transformation processes increases the value chain in firms and, as a result, efficiency and productivity are sustained in the organization [22]. Lean processes are also achieved and linked to innovation. As a result, we propose

Proposition 2.

According to the literature published in SCOPUS on this topic, innovation is the most outstanding keyword in the BMA and EEF subject areas linked to digital entrepreneurship.

Due to the emerging economic crisis spread in some developed and emerging countries during the post-COVID-19 era, and other global crises emerging linked to wars or climate change, entrepreneurs are focusing their efforts on the platform-based collaborative economy. As a result, service provision has been compelled through digital platforms [23], where ‘pay-per-click’ (PPC) has a crucial role. This win–win collaboration opens new business opportunities for growth, higher efficiency, and value creation, especially when selling products and services on digital platforms. In this respect, [23] found that the likelihood of service provision through outlets in the collaborative economy is highest among highly skilled young (aged 25–34 years) entrepreneurs living in cities.

Connecting the components of digital collaboration and entrepreneurship, combined with the assumption of the existence of various research and business opportunities, derives into the possibility of analyzing different entrepreneurial fields of application to benefit organizations to the best knowledge on the topics, relationships, and network maps with digital entrepreneurship [24].

Added to value creation for society and the environment, digital entrepreneurship plays a key role when firms look to be sustainable because stakeholder inclusion is reinforced to achieve venture viability [25]. Corporate sustainability can be supported by incorporating a solid PPC-based system as part of the marketing-related procedures of the firm. As a result, a constant income flow can be created to finance the firm.

Most of the previous studies focused on the importance of analyzing how digital entrepreneurship, digital governance, and effective governance during the pandemic is reshaping the entrepreneurship sector [26]. The study of [27] also addresses the impact of applying digital entrepreneurship on organizational performance in companies operating in the pharmaceutical industries from the perspective of the social network theory.

Digital entrepreneurship reduces transaction costs [28] as the expenses incurred to carry out a market transaction are lower. When organizations implement PPC-based strategies, financial flows tend to increase. Thus, before the pandemic, business schools started to study platform evolution (platform designs and governance) to understand their contribution as strategies and its economic implication to look into software engineering as a discipline contributing to entrepreneurial ecosystems [29], recognizing this progress in the field as a starting point for new business models [30] and a way of progressing towards sustainable development [31] and the acquisition of digital competencies, with PPC being one of the main results for this marketing-based implementation.

From the analyzed literature, we focus only on the literature related to BMA (Business, Management and Accounting) and EEF (Economics, Econometrics, and Finance) subject areas to understand if digital entrepreneurship and PPC, as a tool related to digital entrepreneurship management, are making a difference in research. As a result, the following propositions can be established.

Proposition 3.

Digital entrepreneurship management, expressed by pay-per-click and mediated by technology and crowdsourcing, strengthens sustainable development.

The quantitative and qualitative relevance of entrepreneurship, innovation, and PPC in the post-COVID-19 era, justifies the need for research in this field. Contrary to the theoretical work of [9], which conceptualizes and theoretically reviews entrepreneurship to propose research themes on this topic, our analysis is a bibliometric review that is novel concerning the issue analyzed, as it originally relates to a mapping analysis of PPC as a practical instrument for digital entrepreneurs to strengthen their firms. Added to this fact, other bibliometric literature published using SCOPUS data on VOSviewer relates to other socioeconomic topics and issues linked to entrepreneurship, such as privacy [32], digital technologies and circular economy [33], rural mother’s empowerment [34], intrapreneurship [35], strategic entrepreneurship [36], immigrant entrepreneurship [37], knowledge sharing and entrepreneurial ecosystems [38], and female entrepreneurship [39].

3. Methodology

To test propositions P1, P2, and P3, the authors combined the SCOPUS bibliographic data tool and VOSviewer version 1.6.18, a software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks for the keywords ‘digital entrepreneurship’ and ‘pay-per-click.’ The text mining functionality included in VOSviewer was used to analyze co-occurrence networks. Based on VOSviewer, bibliometric networks can be found in five types of analysis: citation, bibliographic coupling, co-occurrence, co-citation, and co-authorship relations. This paper applies a bibliometric and content review approach to digital entrepreneurship linked to co-occurrences and the total link strength of documents published on digital entrepreneurship from 2001 to 2022 being TITLE-ABS-KEY (digital AND entrepreneurship) AND (LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “BUSI”) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “ECON”)) the search string used. Regarding PPC as a tool linked to digital entrepreneurship management, the query string is (TITLE-ABS-KEY (pay-per-click)) AND (digital AND entrepreneurship) AND (LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “BUSI”) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “ECON”)). The analysis is completed for the keywords ‘digital entrepreneurship’ and ‘pay-per-click’ with three complementary visual maps: a cluster-based network visualization, a time-dependent overlay visualization, and a concentration-based density visualization.

4. Results and Discussion

In the SCOPUS database, for the period 2001–2022 in all 27 subject areas, the item ‘digital entrepreneurship’ adds up to 2154 documents, of which 1055 documents (712 articles, 130 book chapters, 92 conference papers, 43 books, 33 reviews, 20 conference reviews, 16 editorials, and 9 others) are from BMA and EEF areas. Top-10 country affiliations and top-5 funding sponsors for the same period are shown in

Table 1. Top-10 country affiliations in SCOPUS for ‘digital entrepreneurship’ only for BMA and EEF subject areas.

Rank	Country	Documents	Rank	Country	Documents
1	USA	179	6	Spain	60
2	UK	122		Russia	60
3	Italy	89	8	India	59
4	Germany	75	9	China	58
5	Australia	63	10	France	45

Legend: UK (United Kingdom), USA (United States of America).

and

Table 2. Top-5 funding sponsors for SCOPUS documents on ‘digital entrepreneurship’ in the BMA and EEF subject areas.

Funding Sponsor	Projects	Country
National Natural Science Foundation of China	17	China
National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences	11	China
European Commission-Horizon 2020	9	European Union
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia	7	Portugal
Economic and Social Research Council	6	UK

Legend: UK (United Kingdom).

, respectively.

As seen in Table 1, although the number of SCOPUS publications on ‘digital entrepreneurship’ is led by authors affiliated with US HEIs (179), the number of documents published by EU (European Union) researchers (UK excluded) (269) far exceeds, by 50.28% and 120.49%, the number of SCOPUS documents published on this topic by US and UK researchers, respectively. Further, three of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries combined (177) almost equal the number of publications published by the USA.

As shown in Table 2, Chinese and EU funding sponsors are leading the number of projects related to digital entrepreneurship due to the different 5-year plans approved in China and the complementary programs launched to foster R&D in the EU (7th Framework Programme (FP7) for Research (2007–2013), Horizon 2020 (2014–2020), and Horizon Europe (2021–2027)).

As shown in

Table 3. SCOPUS documents published on digital entrepreneurship (2014–2022).

Period	3-Year Average	Year	Documents
	---	2001	1
1	1.00	2002	0
		2003	1
		2004	2
2	3.33	2005	6
		2006	3
		2007	1
3	4.66	2008	5
		2009	4
		2010	5
4	8.66	2011	8
		2012	10
		2013	8
5	23.66	2014	19
		2015	24
		2016	28
6	90.66	2017	58
		2018	91
		2019	123
7	192.33	2020	170
		2021	237
		2022	232

, there is a growing interest among researchers in publishing on digital entrepreneurship, especially after 2018. This rapid growth is observed in the three-year averages of the periods considered, going from 23.66 in 2014–2016 to 90.66 in 2017–2019. During the COVID-19 era, the average (192.33) has more than doubled compared to the previous period.

As a result, data results show an accelerating growing interest in researching digital entrepreneurship during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the 3-year average has multiplied by 8.13 when periods 1 and 3 are compared. Therefore, P1 is validated.

To test P2, we apply a bibliometric and content review approach on digital entrepreneurship linked to OC (co-occurrences) and TLS (total link strength) of documents on digital entrepreneurship published from 2001 to 2022 for the BMA and EEF subject areas only, with 15 being the minimum number of co-occurrences of a keyword. Of the 3728 keywords, 43 met the threshold, of which 20 were selected, as shown in

Table 4. Digital Entrepreneurship: Co-occurrences and total link strength of documents on digital entrepreneurship.

	OC	TLS		OC	TLS
Innovation	148	332	ENTED	35	48
DIGENT	148	208	ESE	15	43
Digitalization	78	179	SUSDEV	19	55
DIGTRANS	48	82	Social Media	28	33
ENTECO	31	64	e-commerce	18	37
DIGTEC	57	138	Digital Marketing	18	23
e-learning	23	57	SOCENT	27	28
Sustainability	15	33	Sharing Economy	15	28
Open Innovation	16	20	INTENT	15	21
Entrepreneurship	349	573	Crowdfunding	21	30

Legend: DIGENT (Digital Entrepreneurship), DITEC (Digital Technologies), DIGITRANS (Digital Transformation), ENTECO (Entrepreneurial Ecosystem), ENTED (Entrepreneurship Education), ESE (Economic and Social Effects), OC (Co-occurrence), SOCENT (Social Entrepreneurship), SUSDEV (Sustainable Development), TLS (Total Link Strength).

.

As shown in Table 4, the items ‘Innovation’ and DIGENT have a high OC (148 each) after the term ‘entrepreneurship’ with a co-occurrence of up to 349, being the only ones higher than 100, which shows their strength. Further, both keywords have the most remarkable TLS (332 and 208, respectively), which shows their strong relationship. This strength is also shown in the three visualization maps (network (Figure 1), overlay (Figure 2), and digital (Figure 3)), although they belong to different clusters.

Regarding the time appearance of the prevalence of ‘digital entrepreneurship’ and ‘innovation,’ the overlay visualization map (Figure 2) shows that the appearance in the entrepreneurship-related literature of the term ‘innovation’ surges before the keyword ‘digital entrepreneurship.’ Further, although the items ‘entrepreneurship education’ (cluster 1), ‘innovation’ (cluster 2), and ‘e-commerce‘ (cluster 3) belong to different groups, as shown in

Table 5. Clusters’ organization for SCOPUS documents on ‘digital entrepreneurship’ in the BMA and EEF subject areas.

Cluster 1	Cluster 2	Cluster 3	Cluster 4
DIGENT	Crowdfunding	DIGITRANS	Digital Marketing
Digital Technologies	Open Innovation	ESE	Digitalization
e-learning	Sharing economy	e-commerce	INTENT
ENTECO	SOCENT	ENT
ENTED	Sustainability	Innovation
Social media	SUSDEV

Legend: DIGENT (Digital Entrepreneurship), DIGITRANS (Digital Transformation), ENT (Entrepreneurship), ENTECO (Entrepreneurial Ecosystem), ENTED (Entrepreneurship Education), ESE (Economic and Social Effects), INTENT (International Entrepreneurship), SOCENT (Social Entrepreneurship), SUSDEV (Sustainable Development), TECDEV (Technological Development).

, they share the same time appearance in the entrepreneurship-related literature for the period 2001–2022.

As a result, data results (OC = 148, TLS = 332) in Table 4 and the visualization maps show that innovation is, out of ‘entrepreneurship,’ the most outstanding keyword in the BMA and EEF subject areas linked to digital entrepreneurship, so P2 is validated.

Regarding pay-per-click (PPC) as a tool related to digital entrepreneurship management, only 63 papers (43 articles, 9 conference papers, 8 book chapters, 2 short surveys, and 1 review) were published from 2005 to 2022, mainly in the US, as shown in

Table 6. Number of documents published in SCOPUS for ‘pay-per-click’ from 2005 to 2022.

Year	Documents	Year	Documents	Year	Documents
2022	1	2016	3	2010	6
2021	0	2015	4	2009	7
2020	4	2014	1	2008	6
2019	7	2013	0	2007	1
2018	9	2012	1	2006	2
2017	3	2011	7	2005	1

and

Table 7. Top-10 country affiliations in SCOPUS for ‘pay-per-click’ only for BMA and EEF subject areas.

Rank	Country	Documents	Rank	Country	Documents
1	USA	25	6	Spain	2
2	China	5	7	Norway	2
3	UK	5	8	Greece	2
4	India	4	9	Australia	2
5	France	3	10	South Africa	2

, respectively.

As shown in Table 6, PPC is a topic that has recently emerged in the literature linked to digital entrepreneurship management. Further, the number of papers published in SCOPUS journals is still low, which invites researchers to focus their interest in this area.

As with ‘digital entrepreneurship,’ the number of publications issued by US academics and researchers on PPC constitutes 48.07% of the documents published in SCOPUS from 2005 to 2022 within the EEF and BMA subject areas. Given the relative novelty of this topic within the economic literature on ‘digital entrepreneurship,’ a broader geographical dispersion of the origin of the publications is expected as the term becomes more popular in the rest of the world.

With respect to P3, there is a strong relationship in the entrepreneurship-related literature on digital entrepreneurship and sustainable development [40,41,42], with ‘sustainable development’ achieving an OC up to 19 and 55 as the TLS, which confirms a moderate strength. Further, as shown in Table 5, digital entrepreneurship (Cluster 1) and sustainable development (Cluster 2) do not belong to the same cluster, which indicates that other variables influence them. In this respect, the item ‘digital entrepreneurship’ is further influenced by technology-related keywords, such as ‘digital technologies’ and ‘e-learning,’ and the item ‘sustainable development’ is mainly affected by keywords related to society, such as ‘social entrepreneurship’ and ‘crowdsourcing.’ As a result, digital entrepreneurship, mediated by technology and social-related issues, strengthens sustainable development, so P3 is validated.

Co-Citations and Authorship

Regarding the relationship between co-citations and authorship in documents related to the keyword ‘digital entrepreneurship’, co-citation among documents was analyzed, setting 50 as the minimum number of citations for an author. Of the 51,611 authors, 147 meet the threshold. For each of the 147 authors, the total strength of the co-citation links with other authors was calculated and authors with more than 200 citations on this topic were selected, as shown in

Table 8. Digital Entrepreneurship: Co-citation and total link strength of authors with more than 200 citations.

	Citations	TLS		Citations	TLS
Nambisan, S.	509	18,037	Autio, E.	246	8848
Wright, M.	316	9703	Davidsson, P.	239	8765
Kraus, S.	248	7316	Acs, Z.J.	228	8246
Audretsch, D.B.	247	7762

Legend: TLS (Total Link Strength).

.

These 147 items are grouped in five clusters (

Table A1. Authors with a minimum of six documents published in the SCOPUS database on topics related to digital entrepreneurship.

Cluster 1	Cluster 2	Cluster 3	Cluster 4
Nambisan, S.	Audretsch, D.B.	Dana, L.-P.	Ferreira, J.J.
Shepherd, D.A.	Belitiski, M.	Elo, M.	Guerrero, M.
Wiklund, J.	Lehmann, E.E.	Salamzadeh, A.	Urbano, D.
Wright, M.	Rossi, M.
Zahra, S.A.
Cluster 5	Cluster 6	Cluster 7
Bouncken, R.B.	Fish, C.	Jones, P.
Brem, A.	Obschonka, M.	Ratten, V.
Kraus, S.

) with 10,248 links and 208,874 total link strength, as shown in Figure 4.

The higher number of authors (51,611) and citations, with 147 authors with more than 200 citations, shows the maturity of digital entrepreneurship as a topic of research, with the number of studies dealing with the impact of digital entrepreneurship on societies and economies being less extensive, especially those located in developing countries.

Regarding the ‘pay-per-click’ keyword, for the type of analysis (citation) and unit of analysis (authors) used in VOSviewer, setting in 1 the minimum number of documents of an author, results and clusters are shown in

Table 9. Pay-per-click: top-10 authors with more than 20 citations in the SCOPUS database.

Author	Docs	Citations	TLS	Author	Docs	Citations	TLS
Jansen, B.J.	2	104	4	Chen, J.	1	75	6
Liu, D.	2	91	8	Whinston, A.B.	1	75	6
Srinivasan, K.	1	77	6	Schuster, S.	1	65	3
Park, Y-H	1	77	6	Dellarocas, C.	1	40	6
Ma, L.	1	77	6	Zhang, M.	1	39	3
Jerath, K.	1	77	6	Sabel, K.	1	39	3

Legend: Docs (Documents), TLS (Total Link Strength).

and

Table 10. Pay-per-click: Auhors’ Clusters.

Cluster 1	Cluster 2	Cluster 3
Chen, J.	Dellarocas, C.	Jansen, B.J.
Jason Choi, W.	Porter, D.	Schlangenotto, D.
Jerath, K.	Shang, R.D.	Schuster, S.
Liu, D.	Smith, V.	Sabel, K.
Ma, L.	Vragov, R.	Zhang, M.
Park, Y-H.
Sayedi, A.
Srinivasan, K.
Viswanathan, S.
Whinston, A.B.

, respectively.

5. Conclusions

5.1. Theoretical Implications

Researching digital entrepreneurship attracts the attention of researchers worldwide to reach a holistic view, independent of affiliations with public or private institutions [1,43]. As shown in Table 1, there is a growing interest in the BRICS countries to research digital entrepreneurship, given that the number of SCOPUS documents published in China (9th position in the Top 10), Russia (7th), and India (8th) almost equals the number of documents published on this topic in the US.

In addition, under the entrepreneurial vision in the literature, when ventures try to improve their performance, innovation is closely connected with digital entrepreneurial dimensions [44,45]. Thus, innovation linked to the SDGs needs a new perspective to redefine new business models for more sustainable economies [46]. In consequence, studying this connection will give researchers a more understandable view of the future of these topics.

Entrepreneurship education is an exciting indicator to show new paths for improving the interest in studying digital entrepreneurship at HEIs. In this sense, HEIs’ efforts to develop incubators and accelerators can strengthen prospective entrepreneurs’ interest in digital entrepreneurship [47,48,49].

Further, the research implications of this study are connected with business-related issues linked to achieving higher productivity and efficiency in organizations related to digitalization processes. Digital entrepreneurship opens new market niches to firms as prospective consumers are inserted into the digital age, especially the younger generations. Innovation plays a crucial role in the academic literature published in SCOPUS on digital entrepreneurship as a research topic. Still, recently, it has tended to be more linked to reducing operating costs and achieving higher efficiency and flexibility to satisfy consumers, as the competition among firms increases worldwide in a more interconnected digital world. As developing countries create wealth and well-being for their populations and a higher educational level is achieved, it is foreseeable that digital entrepreneurship will be fostered in these nations thanks to ICTs, which will encourage PPC.

5.2. Managerial Implications

Our findings have many positive implications for scientific and corporate activities. First, researchers and managers can focus on reviewing the literature through the VOSviewer tool in combination with the database of bibliographic references in different dimensions out of co-occurrences. Second, information obtained can be graphically visualized to obtain the most relevant information to be applied in firms. Third, and from the standpoint of time spent on literature reviews, practitioners, professors, and researchers can better manage their time and effort by combining VOSviewer with bibliographic tools included in databases, such as SCOPUS, Web of Sciences, or EBSCO.

Further, policymakers can bring new perspectives about how the term digital entrepreneurship is brought to organizations. Then, ventures and governments can bring new perspectives about incorporating strategies in the challenges in this digital era.

5.3. Limitations and Future Research

A limitation of our study is that we used one database only (SCOPUS) without comparing it to others, especially more generalistic ones. As a result, the analysis focused primarily on researchers affiliated with HEIs to the detriment of researchers working in the industry.

Our paper can serve as a basis for future studies by including digital entrepreneurial-related data from other databases, such as Web of Science (WoS), EBSCO, Dimensions, Lens, PubMed, Crossref, and other databases and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces).

Finally, the main future direction of this study is to make citation mapping and cluster analysis easier to be applied for practical purposes. We intend to use VOSviewer with other databases and topics to take advantage of its benefits and enable researchers to deal with scientific activities related to business topics endowed with a powerful bibliographic tool to carry out network data maps. As a result, research linked to digital entrepreneurship and its combination with other issues will be carried out, particularly from the perspective of developing and emerging countries where there is a lack of papers published on this topic.