What Are the Topics That Business Ecosystems Navigate? Updating of Scientific Activity and Future Research Agenda

Abstract

The objective of this research was to review the manuscripts registered in the Scopus database related to business ecosystems during the period 2018–2022. A total of 96 documents were selected and examined under a bibliometric and bibliographic approach. The results showed an annual growth rate of 13.21%. The United Kingdom (n = 22) led the countries with the most documents, computer science (n = 40) is the subject area with the most publications, and articles (n = 61) and conference papers (n = 23) dominated the types of documents. The nine most studied topics were innovation ecosystems, collaborative ecosystems, sustainable business ecosystems, digital business ecosystems, ecosystems of the Internet of Things, circular ecosystems in companies, regulatory frameworks for digital business ecosystems, resilience of business ecosystems, and ecosystems in smart cities. Six unexplored themes were extracted for future research: ICT industries, smart contracts, electric vehicles, serious games, energy, and blockchain. It should be noted that this study is one of the most up to date, and 85.5% of the 96 publications were original studies, i.e., valuable information that supports the results.