Entrepreneurial opportunity recognition: a bibliometric overview and clustering analysis

Abstract

Purpose

Entrepreneurship is the driving force of countries for sustainable economic development. The importance of this issue is to the extent that in recent years, countries have made great efforts to develop their entrepreneurial ecosystem. But the starting point for entrepreneurship is when an opportunity is identified and the entrepreneur rises to use it. Accordingly, opportunity recognition will be the foundation of entrepreneurship and ultimately sustainable development. Given the importance of this topic, this paper attempts to provide a large picture of the studies conducted in this field.

Design/methodology/approach

Given the importance of this topic, this paper attempts to provide a large picture of the studies conducted in this field by reviewing 868 articles published on the Web of Science database in the field of opportunity recognition. Accordingly, using statistical descriptions of articles, analyzing the communication network among elements such as authors, countries, institutions, keyword analysis in articles and examining their trends over time, identifying the most important articles using co-citation analysis and finally this macroimage has been mapped, clustered and identified in leading articles in the last decade by co-citation clustering.

Findings

The results of the clustering show that the five main clusters of recent decades have included entrepreneurial characteristics and opportunity recognition, macroeconomic opportunity recognition cluster (community and impact on economic development of the country), opportunity recognition process cluster, opportunity recognition cluster in serial and intra-entrepreneurship and opportunity recognition cluster in new venture internationalization.

Originality/value

Using a bibliometric analysis and co-citation analysis in the field of opportunity recognition and making a big picture of studies in this field of study is a contribution that can be used for future studies and researchers and managers in this field.

Citation

Mohammadi, N. and Heshmati, S. (2021), "Entrepreneurial opportunity recognition: a bibliometric overview and clustering analysis", World Journal of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 239-258. https://doi.org/10.1108/WJSTSD-04-2021-0042