Entrepreneurial Opportunities for Marginalized Communities through Digital Platforms

Abstract

Although there is considerable emphasis on the feasibility of entering entrepreneurship through low-cost digital platforms for those 'omitted' from traditional labor and capital markets, evidence on who benefits, how, and under what conditions is dispersed across disciplines. This paper documents that evidence through a systematic synthesis of 20 peer-reviewed publications from 2021 to 2024 on refugees, women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ communities, and other marginalized groups. Five opportunity mechanisms and four constraints were coded for each source. The opportunity mechanisms that emerged most often were Empowerment and agency (65% of sources), social capital and networks (60%), and market access (45%), while institutional exclusion (45%), digital divide and skills deficits (35%), and social norms and safety risks (35%) were the predominant constraints. There were more opportunity themes from sources with direct digital focus than from contextual sources (2.79 themes per source vs. 1.33 themes per source). The opportunity-to-constraint ratio ranged from 1.00 for refugee-focused studies to 3.40 for studies of general platform ecosystems; opportunity and constraint emphasis were not correlated (r = −0.01), suggesting that platform benefits are not necessarily correlated to exclusion. The findings inform an opportunity-conversion framework and offer practical implications for platform designers, policymakers, and support organizations. The results are indicative, based on a coded evidence base rather than primary data.