Knowledge Sharing in Entrepreneurial Ecosystems for Sustainable Economic Development: A Bibliometric and Visual Analysis of Global Research Trends
This bibliometric analysis of 677 global journal articles (1990–2025) reveals that while research on knowledge sharing within entrepreneurial ecosystems has surged recently, it remains largely disconnected from sustainable economic development and SDG 8, highlighting a critical gap between theoretical frameworks and empirical practice.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Imagine a bustling city where new businesses are born every day. For these ventures to thrive, they cannot work in isolation; they need to learn from one another. They need to exchange ideas, share tricks of the trade, and build upon the discoveries of their neighbors. This flow of information is the lifeblood of an entrepreneurial ecosystem. In the world of business and economics, researchers have long studied how this knowledge moves. They distinguish between three main ways it travels: the voluntary sharing of ideas between colleagues, the deliberate transfer of skills from a parent company to a branch, and the accidental "spillover" of information that happens simply because people and firms are located near each other. The big question driving this field is how these flows of knowledge can be harnessed not just to make money, but to create a better world. Specifically, can they help nations achieve "Sustainable Development Goal 8," a global promise to ensure that economic growth creates decent jobs and improves lives for everyone, rather than just enriching a few?
A team of researchers from Manonmaniam Sundaranar University in India set out to answer this question by taking a massive, panoramic view of the global conversation on this topic. Instead of reading individual studies one by one, they used a method called bibliometric analysis. Think of this as a way to map the entire landscape of a field by looking at the metadata of thousands of published articles—who wrote them, where they were published, what words they used, and how often other scientists cited them. The team gathered 677 peer-reviewed journal articles written in English between 1990 and 2025. These papers focused specifically on knowledge sharing, transfer, and spillover within the context of business and economics. By analyzing this vast collection, they could see the hidden patterns of how the scientific community thinks about these issues, identifying which ideas are central, which are fading, and where the gaps in our understanding lie.
The first thing the researchers found was a story of explosive growth. For decades, from 1990 through the early 2000s, the number of papers on this topic was small and sporadic. But starting around 2019, the field began to accelerate rapidly. By 2024, the number of articles published in a single year had reached 100, a sharp increase from just a handful in previous decades. In fact, nearly two-thirds of all the papers in their entire 35-year dataset were published from 2020 onward. This surge suggests that the world is paying much closer attention to how knowledge moves in business, likely driven by the rise of digital platforms and a growing urgency to address global challenges like sustainability. However, this growth is not evenly distributed. The research is heavily concentrated in a few wealthy nations, with the United Kingdom, the United States, China, and several Western European countries producing the vast majority of the work. While China stands out as a major non-Western contributor, the voices of many developing nations, where the need for sustainable economic growth is often most acute, are largely missing from the conversation.
When the team looked at the most influential ideas, they found that the field still leans heavily on a few foundational theories developed years ago. Two specific papers, one from 2008 and another from 2018, are cited more than any others, acting as the bedrock for almost all subsequent research. These papers established the basic rules of how knowledge spillovers drive entrepreneurship and how digital tools change the way ecosystems form. Yet, despite this shared foundation, the researchers discovered that the field is actually quite fragmented. Using a visual mapping technique, they identified seven distinct clusters of research that rarely talk to each other. One group focuses on how people share knowledge within organizations, another on how multinational companies transfer skills, and a third on the economic benefits of regional clusters. These groups are like separate islands in an archipelago; they are part of the same ocean, but they have developed their own languages and priorities without much cross-pollination.
The most striking and concerning finding of the study concerns the link between knowledge sharing and sustainability. The researchers explicitly looked for signs that scientists were connecting these knowledge flows to the goal of creating a sustainable economy. They found almost no evidence of this connection in the mainstream literature. While there is a separate, smaller body of work dedicated to "sustainable entrepreneurship," the vast majority of research on knowledge sharing ignores the sustainability angle entirely. The words "circular economy," "green innovation," or "sustainable development" rarely appear in the dominant clusters of research. This creates a significant gap: we have a rich theoretical understanding of how ecosystems could support sustainability, but the actual data and studies driving policy are largely silent on the subject. The researchers suggest that this means current policies might be promoting knowledge sharing without ensuring it leads to the kind of decent work and environmental stewardship that the global community has promised.
The study also highlighted a disconnect between the digital revolution and the research on it. While the real world has seen a massive shift toward digital entrepreneurial ecosystems, where knowledge is shared through apps and online platforms, the academic literature has not fully caught up. Terms related to digital transformation appear only as small, peripheral notes in the research maps, rather than as central themes. This suggests that while the world is changing fast, our scientific understanding of how these digital changes affect knowledge sharing is still in its early stages. Furthermore, the heavy reliance on research from wealthy nations means that the solutions being proposed might not work for the developing world. The mechanisms that help a startup in London or New York might fail in a region with different infrastructure, skills, and social networks, yet the literature offers very little guidance on how to adapt these ideas for those contexts.
Ultimately, this paper serves as a clear map of where we stand. It confirms that the study of how businesses share knowledge is growing fast and is vital for economic progress. However, it also reveals that the field is split into isolated groups, is dominated by a few wealthy countries, and has largely forgotten to ask how this knowledge sharing can help solve the world's biggest sustainability problems. The researchers conclude that to truly achieve global economic goals, the scientific community needs to bridge these gaps. They need to connect the different islands of research, bring in voices from the developing world, and explicitly study how knowledge flows can be designed to create not just wealth, but a better, more sustainable future for all. The path forward requires moving beyond theory to test these ideas in the real world, ensuring that the promise of shared knowledge translates into tangible improvements for people everywhere.
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