The evolution of the literature on entrepreneurship. Uncovering some under researched themes

Recently bibliometrics techniques are being widely used to complement traditional qualitative reviews of the literature in given scientific areas. The majority of these reviews are based in large databases of articles published in ISI indexed journals, overlooking the richness of studies that are being published in key handbooks and books. This is particularly true in the case of entrepreneurship field. In the present paper we provide a survey of the literature based on an in-depth analysis of major handbooks, books and scientific journals in the field, identifying its major topics, their evolution across time and the current trends. From this exercise, we found that entrepreneurship education emerges as a recent theme with most of the papers in the area focusing on entrepreneurial universities, productivity of technology transfer offices, new firm creation and the environmental context. The largest part of these studies analyse US universities or universities from highly developed European countries, such as Germany, Sweden and United Kingdom. The review of the literature performed highlights that the theme of (higher education) students’ entrepreneurial intents is under researched. Furthermore, it uncovers that the (potential) link between university entrepreneurial models and the propensity of students for new venture creation is likely to constitute an interesting and challenging path for future research.