Sustainable Entrepreneurship Architecture: Redefining Business Competitiveness in Low-Income Countries (Published)
Sustainable entrepreneurship has been created as a new route towards poverty, market marginalization and structural underdevelopment characterizing the low-income nations. Although the literature indicates the potential of innovative business models, inclusive value creation, and collaborative ecosystems (Schaltegger et al., 2016; Dote-Pardo et al., 2025), a comprehensive framework outlining how sustainable entrepreneurship can transform the competitiveness of the nation has not been developed yet. This paper presents a Sustainable Entrepreneurship Architecture (SEA) – a multi-layered model that relates entrepreneurial capabilities, socio-institutional systems and resources-constrained market environments. The investigation based on a qualitative-integrative research design that incorporates thematic literature review and case-based comparative research design to formulate a competitiveness creation based on resource recombination, institutional relationships, digital integration, and ecosystem-inspired innovation is focused on sustainable entrepreneurship.The findings indicate that sustainable entrepreneurship can be used to promote competitiveness in low-income countries in four ways, namely: (1) adaptive innovation, especially in the context of scarcity (Hart et al., 2016); (2) social-embedded business model designs that match the needs of the community (Sanchez and Ricart, 2010); (3) inclusive market linkages served by hybrids of public-private partnerships (Nelson, 2006); and (4) ecosystem-enabled scaling through digital technologies (Plecko All these mechanisms make the pillars of the proposed SEA. The research also provides a conceptual architecture that can be scaled by policy makers, development organizations and business persons to develop resource-constrained settings in a long-term and competitiveness-based way. They focus on institutional capacity building, innovation systems, and digital sustainability systems as suggested.
Keywords: Competitiveness, Sustainable Development, Sustainable entrepreneurship, business model design, inclusive markets, innovation ecosystems, low-income countries