Entrepreneurship as Catalyst for Sustainable Development: Opening the Black Box

Abstract

In the last decades, sustainable development has become an important topic of discussion for scholars and practitioners concerned with environmental issues. Since the publication of the Brundtland Report, which represents a milestone in triggering awareness for sustainability issues, sustainable development has steadily gained popularity to become one of the most important environmental discourses today. Together with innovation, the United Nations identified entrepreneurship as a key element for addressing sustainable development challenges. Due to its growing recognition as a driver of sustainable development, entrepreneurship is subject to research across many scientific disciplines. To systemize the current state of knowledge, the purpose of this paper is to systematically review recent literature and to outline how sustainable development influences entrepreneurial activities and vice versa. In addition, it investigates whether and under what circumstances entrepreneurship can contribute to the economic, environmental and social dimension of sustainable development. The systematic literature review shows that several research areas, such as opportunities, motivations, competencies, strategies and business models of sustainability-oriented entrepreneurs, have already received wide coverage by academic literature. However, our knowledge about how entrepreneurial activities contribute to the achievement of the United Nations sustainable development goals is still limited and should be addressed by further research.