Resumo

The economic discussion about collaboration between different agents to trade products and services highlights how actually firms and entrepreneurs can create value and partnership on the same marketplace as an innovative ecosystem (Adner & Kapoor, 2010). Most of these firms are young, only a few years old in some cases, but they ignite very quickly. These types of companies are considered startups in many ways (Stenholm, Acs & Wuebker, 2013). Ever since the time of Schumpeter (2004), the concepts of entrepreneurship and innovation have been intertwined with economic development.

The evolution of the main digital entrepreneurial business ecosystem concepts is not concluded. Considering the dispersion of the discussion (Nery, Hsu, Asgary, 2019), we conduct this study to answer the question: What is the bibliometric evidence that represent the evolution of the concept frameworks from Digital Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (DEE) to Digital Platform-based Ecosystems (DPE)?

Most recently, the concept of digital business ecosystems gained an economic context with technological dimension – the Digital Age (Acs et al., 2021). The historical analysis of the global technological revolution demonstrates an economy that migrates from organizational form based on the local factory, passing by the national corporation, to the non-geographical platform in the 21st century. This platform economy or Digital Platform Economy becomes the new discussion about the evolutionary idea of digitally enables activities in business, politics and social integration (Acs et al., 2021).

Focus on Relevance: Annual production is increasing in the last five years (70.23% papers), achieving the top period of publication in 2020 (21.40% of articles), demonstrating a possibility to exceed in 2021 (32 papers by May). The paper The Digital Entrepreneurial Ecosystem (Sussan and Acs, 2017) showed a good contribution. Science Mapping: Co-citation network showed two discussions, first concentrated in digital debate and Second in the ecosystem. Co-occurrence network showed the word "platform ecosystems" conducting discussions. Thematic evolution highlighted the evolution from DEE to DPE.

The combination of the findings identified and discussed in the subject of digital business ecosystems, mainly focused in the research trends of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem (EE), Digital Ecosystem (DE), Digital Entrepreneurial Ecosystem (DEE) and Digital Platform-based Ecosystem (DPE), revealed patterns of a thematic evolution in the digital age. It is composed of a timeline of intellectual base in one side, the research trends on the other side, and the most relevant ideas in the EE, DE, DEE and DPE – this last in the center of this discussion.

Acs, Z. J., Song, A. K., Szerb, L., Audretsch, D. B., & Komlósi, E. (2021). The Evolution of the Global Digital Platform Economy: 1971-2021. Available at SSRN, https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3785411. Nery, A.L.B., Hsu, P. L., & Asgary, N. (2020, october). The Digital Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: A bibliometric review. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Project Management, Innovation and Sustainbility – SINGEP, São Paulo, SP, Brazil, 8. Sussan, F., & Acs, Z. J. (2017). The digital entrepreneurial ecosystem. Small Business Economics, 49(1), pp. 55–73.