A bibliometric review of research on entrepreneurial capacity for the period 1979 to 2022: Current status, development, and future research directions

Figures & data

Table 1. EC constructs, as represented by the top twenty authors

Author/authors (Year)	EC Constructs
Norton (1988)	Resource mobilisation
Fladmoe-Lindquist (1996)	The capacity of learning and integration
Otani (1996)	Resource mobilisation
Gibb (1999)	Comprehend and manage with a particular lifestyle. Cope with uncertainty in a universal context Develop entrepreneurial organisations Handle processes related to business growth Handle networks comprising stakeholders Become an expert of strategic awareness Be engaged in the progress related to personal entrepreneurial attributes and actions Study the interactions between a business and the environment Handle the global information system efficiently
Bygrave et al. (2003)	Knowledge of creating a new venture Experience Ability and skills to create a new venture
Hindle and Yencken (2004)	Resource mobilisation Experience Ability and skills to create a new venture Discovering the idea that leads to an opportunity
Grilo and Irigoyen (2006)	Ability to handle administrative complexities Risk tolerance capability
North and Smallbone (2006)	Inspiration and the approaches of people toward entrepreneurship Business and management skills
Collins et al. (2006)	Opportunity identification and awareness
Newbert (2008)	Innovative capacity Locus of control
Leitão and Franco (2008)	Enthusiasm at the workplace The inclination toward modernising activities Entrepreneur’s insights Efficient organisational structure Effective managerial practices Participative management Absorptive capacity
Hegarty and Jones (2008)	Entrepreneur’s ability to utilise his or her uniqueness in a manner that exceeds their mental endowments that have already been in existence
Nicolaou et al. (2009)	Opportunity identification and awareness
Tseng (2009)	Building enterprise value from intangible assets, such as knowledge Effective knowledge management
D’Este et al. (2010)	Identify and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities.
Hindle (2010)	Ability to evaluate opportunities Art of skilful dreaming
Baron and Henry (2010)	Opportunity identification and awareness Opportunity development ability Ability to evaluate opportunities
Clarysse et al. (2011)	Opportunity identification and awareness Ability to absorb opportunities
Carlisle et al. (2013)	Capacity to manage knowledge-intensive niche products
Ablo (2015)	Effective knowledge management

Source: Authors’ compilations

Figure 1. PRISMA flow diagram.

Source: Authors’ compilation

Table 2. Composition of research publications

Group	Items (N)
Document Type	Book Chapter (10); Conference Paper (45); Article (138)
Language	English (168); Spanish (15); Portuguese (06); French (02); Italian (01); Slovak (01)

Source: Authors’ analysis (based on the data retrieved from the WoS, Scopus, and GS databases (December 2022)

Figure 2. Documents by year.

Source: Authors’ own analysis (based on the data retrieved from the WoS, Scopus, and GS databases (December 2022)

Table 3. Year of publications

Year	Frequency	% (N = 193)	Cumulative Percent
1979–1990	3	1.55	1.55
1991–2000	6	3.11	4.66
2001	1	0.52	5.18
2002	2	1.04	6.22
2003	1	0.52	6.74
2004	1	0.52	7.25
2005	2	1.04	8.29
2006	6	3.11	11.40
2007	2	1.04	12.44
2008	8	4.15	16.58
2009	5	2.59	19.17
2010	11	5.70	24.87
2011	10	5.18	30.05
2012	5	2.59	32.64
2013	12	6.22	38.86
2014	6	3.11	41.97
2015	11	5.70	47.67
2016	13	6.74	54.40
2017	11	5.70	60.10
2018	14	7.25	67.36
2019	18	9.33	76.68
2020	15	7.77	84.46
2021	17	8.81	93.26
2022	13	6.74	100
Total	193	100.00	100

Source: Authors’ own analysis (based on the data retrieved from the WoS, Scopus, and GS databases (December 2022)

Figure 3. Network visualisation map of the citation by countries.

The minimum documents pertaining to a country = 1The minimum citations pertaining to a country = 3Source: Authors’ analysis (based on the data retrieved from the WoS, Scopus, and GS databases (December 2022)

Table 4. General publication profiling of the research field of EC

Group	Top Ten Items in terms of Number of Publications
Country	China (25); United Kingdom (19); Spain (17); United States (13); Portugal (12); Australia (9); Canada (7); Malaysia (7); France (6); Romania (6)
Research Institution	Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iasi, Romania (11); Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Australia (7); National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship, United Kingdom (4); University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Department Of Sociology, Zagreb, Croatia (2); University of Valencia, Spain (2); School of Economics and Management, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal (2); Loughborough Business School, Loughborough University, United Kingdom (2); Management College of Southern Africa, Fort Hare University, South Africa (2); Loughborough University, United Kingdom (2); London Business School, United Kingdom (2)
Source Title	Education and Training (4); Communications in Computer and Information Science (3); Environmental Engineering and Management Journal (3); African Journal of Business and Economic Research (2); Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship (2); Contributions to Management Science (2); Espacios (2); International Journal of Innovation and Learning (2); International Small Business Journal (2); Technovation (2)
Author	Hindle, K. (6); Boubker, O. (3); Avasilcǎi, S. (2); Coduras, A. (2); Collins, L.A. (2); Hannon, P.D. (2); Moroz, P.W. (2); Rebernik, M. (2); Reynolds, P. (2); Ruiz, J. (2); Smith, A.J. (2); Tominc, P. (2); Chhabra, M. (2)

Source: Authors’ analysis (based on the data retrieved from the WoS, Scopus, and GS databases (December 2022)

Figure 4. Network visualisation map of the author keywords.

Source: Authors’ own analysis (based on the data retrieved from the WoS, Scopus, and GS databases (December 2022)

Table 5. Top keywords

Author Keywords	Frequency	Per cent
entrepreneurship	52	8.32
entrepreneurial capacity	36	5.88
innovation	19	2.23
entrepreneur	16	1.62
higher education	10	1.42
entrepreneurship education	11	1.22
entrepreneurial university	5	1.01
gender	7	1.01
technology transfer	8	1.01
learning	5	0.81
performance	5	0.81
sustainable development	5	0.81
academic entrepreneurship	5	0.61
entrepreneurial intention	5	0.61
entrepreneurialism	5	0.61
self-employment	5	0.61
spin-offs	5	0.61

Total Keywords = 928

Source: Authors’ analysis (based on the data retrieved from the WoS, Scopus, and GS databases (December 2022)

Table 6. List of the author(s) for every document

No. of Authors	Frequency	% (N = 193)
1	41	21.24
2	51	26.42
3	54	27.98
4	34	17.62
5	8	3.80
6	3	1.55
7	1	0.52
9	1	0.52
Total	193	100.00

Source: Authors’ analysis (based on the data retrieved from the WoS, Scopus, and GS databases (December 2022)

Figure 5. Network visualisation map of the co-authorship.

Unit of analysis = CountriesCounting technique: fractional countingThe minimum documents per country = 3The minimum citations per country = 5Source: Authors’ analysis (based on the data retrieved from the WoS, Scopus, and GS databases (December 2022)

Figure 6. Network visualisation map of the co-authorship.

Component of analysis = AuthorsCounting technique: fractional countingThe minimum documents per author = 2The minimum citations per author = 3Source: Authors’ analysis (based on the data retrieved from the WoS, Scopus, and GS databases (December 2022)

Table 7. Citations metrics

Metrics	Data
Publication years	1979–2022
Citation years	43 (1979–2022)
Papers	193
Citations	2458
Citations/year	57.16
Citations/paper	12.76
Citations/author	5.57
Papers/author	0.44
Authors/paper	2.28

Source: Authors’ own analysis (based on the data retrieved from the WoS, Scopus, and GS databases (December 2022)

Figure 7. Most influential authors.

Source: Authors’ own analysis (based on the data retrieved from the WoS, Scopus, and GS databases (December 2022)

Table 8. Highly cited articles: most influential authors

No.	Authors	Title	Cites	Cites per Year
1	Baron and Henry (2010)	“How entrepreneurs acquire the capacity to excel: Insights from research on expert performance”	193	18.80
2	Gibb (1999)	“Can we build “effective” entrepreneurship through management development?”	172	7.90
3	Grilo and Irigoyen (2006)	“Entrepreneurship in the EU: To wish and not to be”	153	10.93
4	Clarysse et al. (2011)	“The impact of entrepreneurial capacity, experience, and organisational support on academic entrepreneurship.”	149	16.56
5	Norton (1988)	“Franchising, brand name capital, and the entrepreneurial capacity problem.”	142	4.44
6	Nicolaou et al. (2009)	“Opportunity identification and the learning toward becoming an entrepreneur: A bivariate genetics perspective.”	117	10.64
7	Hindle and Yencken (2004)	“Entrepreneurship, public research commercialisation, and innovative technology-based organisations: An incorporated model.”	97	6.06
8	North and Smallbone (2006)	“Developing entrepreneurship and initiative in the peripheral and rural locations in Europe: Certain challenges faced by policymakers.”	90	6.43
9	Fladmoe-Lindquist (1996)	“International franchising: Capabilities and development”	87	3.63
10	Bygrave et al. (2003)	“Executive Forum: An examination of informal investments pertaining to 29 countries comprising the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.”	84	4.94
11	Carlisle et al. (2013)	“Assisting improvements in tourism development via multi-stakeholder methodologies: Experiences in Africa.”	84	12.00
12	Tseng (2009)	“A study on customer, supplier, and competitor knowledge by using the knowledge chain model.”	62	5.64
13	D’Este (2010)	“Academic entrepreneurship: The aspects influencing the ability of academic researchers to recognise and utilise entrepreneurial opportunities.”	55	5.50
14	Newbert (2008)	“Looking beyond resources: Discovering the significance of entrepreneurship to organisational-level competitive benefit in technologically demanding industries.”	54	4.50
15	Ablo (2015)	“Local involvement in Ghana’s gas and oil industry: The difference caused by enterprise development.”	49	9.80
16	Hindle (2010)	“Skillful visualisation: Experimenting on a general model pertaining to the entrepreneurial procedure with the aid of a particular narrative pertaining to venture establishment.”	45	4.50
17	Collins (2006)	“Application of a synergistic learning method to entrepreneurship education.”	39	2.79
18	Leitão and Franco (2008)	“Individual entrepreneurship capacity and the performance of SMEs.”	33	2.75
19	Otani (1996)	“A human capital approach to entrepreneurial capacity.”	26	1.08
20	Hegarty and Jones (2008)	“Graduate entrepreneurship: More than child’s play.”	25	2.08

Source: Author’s analysis (based on the data retrieved from the WoS, Scopus, and GS databases (December 2022)

Figure 8. VOSvViewer Visualization of a Term Co-occurrence Network Based on TitleFields (Full Counting).

Source: Authors’ analysis (based on the data retrieved from the WoS, Scopus, and GS databases (December 2022)

Figure 9. VOS Viewer Visualization of a Term Co-occurrence Network Based on Title and Abstract Fields (Binary Counting).

Source: Authors’ analysis (based on the data retrieved from the WoS, Scopus, and GS databases (December 2022)

Norton, S. W. (1988). Franchising, brand name capital, and the entrepreneurial capacity problem. Strategic Management Journal, 9(S1), 105–114. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.4250090711.

 Google Scholar

Fladmoe-Lindquist, K. (1996). International franchising: Capabilities and development. Journal of Business Venturing, 11(5), 419–438. https://doi.org/10.1016/0883-9026(96)00056-0.

 Google Scholar

Otani, K. (1996). A human capital approach to entrepreneurial capacity. Economica, 63(250), 273–289. https://doi.org/10.2307/2554763.

 Google Scholar

Gibb, A. (1999). Can we build ‘effective’ entrepreneurship through management development?. Journal of General Management, 24(4), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/030630709902400401.

 Google Scholar

Bygrave, W., Hay, M., Ng, E., & Reynolds, P. (2003). Executive forum: A study of informal investing in 29 nations composing the global entrepreneurship monitor. Venture Capital: An International Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance, 5(2), 101–116. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369106032000097021

 Google Scholar

Hindle, K., & Yencken, J. (2004). Public research commercialisation, entrepreneurship and new technology based firms: An integrated model. Technovation, 24(10), 793–803. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0166-4972(0300023-3

 Google Scholar

North, D., & Smallbone, D. (2006). Developing entrepreneurship and enterprise in Europe’s peripheral rural areas: Some issues facing policymakers. European Planning Studies, 14(1), 41–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654310500339125.

 Google Scholar

Collins, L. A., Smith, A. J., & Hannon, P. D. (2006). Discovering entrepreneurship: An exploration of a tripartite approach to developing entrepreneurial capacities. Journal of European Industrial Training, 30(3), 188–205.

 Google Scholar

Newbert, S. L. (2008). Value, rareness, competitive advantage, and performance: A conceptual ‐level empirical investigation of the resource‐based view of the firm. Strategic Management Journal, 29(7), 745–768. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.686.

 Google Scholar

Hegarty, C., & Jones, C. (2008). Graduate entrepreneurship: More than child's play. Education+ Training, 50(7), 626–637.

 Google Scholar

Nicolaou, N., Shane, S., Cherkas, L., & Spector, T. D. (2009). Opportunity recognition and the tendency to be an entrepreneur: A bivariate genetics perspective. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 110(2), 108–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2009.08.005.

 Google Scholar

D’Este, P., Mahdi, S., & Neely, A. (2010). Academic entrepreneurship: What are the factors shaping the capacity of academic researchers to identify and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. Danish Research Unit for Industrial Dynamics Working Paper No. 10, 5. https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13048/378

 Google Scholar

Hindle, K. (2010). Skillful dreaming: Testing a general model of entrepreneurial process with a specific narrative of venture creation. Entrepreneurial Narrative Theory Ethnomethodology and Reflexivity, 1, 97–135.

 Google Scholar

Baron, R. A., & Henry, R. A. (2010). How entrepreneurs acquire the capacity to excel: Insights from research on expert performance. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 4(1), 49–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.11.025

 Google Scholar

Clarysse, B., Tartari, V., & Salter, A. (2011). The impact of entrepreneurial capacity, experience and organisational support on academic entrepreneurship. Research Policy, 40(8), 1084–1093. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2011.05.010

 Google Scholar

Carlisle, S., Kunc, M., Jones, E., & Tiffin, S. (2013). Supporting innovation for tourism development through multi-stakeholder approaches: Experiences from Africa. Tourism Management, 35, 59–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2012.05.010

 Google Scholar

Ablo, A. D. (2015). Local content and participation in Ghana’s oil and gas industry: Can enterprise development make a difference? The Extractive Industries and Society, 2(2), 320–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2015.02.003

 Google Scholar