The emergence of the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship

In the past decade, a new and promising literature has been established linking endogenous growth theory to knowledge spillovers and entrepreneurship theory: the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship (KSTE). This study conducts a bibliometric analysis of scholarly research on this fruitful and promising strand of the literature. It highlights the increasing importance and acceptance of KSTE in the scientific community worldwide, its emergence across different fields in economics, management and policy and also the issues and questions raised. Based on all articles on KSTE published in refereed journals in the past 15 years (1999–2013), we identify the key academic journals, the main issues and subjects addressed and the backward and forward citations. We also identify the authors and their connections in terms of coauthorships to reconstruct the scientific community debating on KSTE. We are confident that our work will benefit scholars intending to leverage KSTE in their research in that it summarizes the main academic conversations within this theoretical perspective and set the boundaries of the network of scholars developing it. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015