Digital Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Maturity: Developing an Integrated Assessment Framework for Cyprus and Small Economies

Digital entrepreneurship has increasingly become an ecosystem phenomenon in which digital infrastructure, human capital, innovation capacity, institutional support, finance, internationalization, sustainability, and digital resilience interact to shape entrepreneurial development. However, existing research remains fragmented and provides limited guidance for systematically assessing the maturity of national digital entrepreneurial ecosystems, particularly in small economies. This study develops the Digital Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Assessment Framework (DEEAF), a multidimensional conceptual framework integrating eight interconnected dimensions into a unified model for assessing ecosystem maturity. The authors developed the framework through a structured synthesis of the literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems, digital entrepreneurship, innovation systems, institutional economics, digital transformation, sustainability, and resilience. The study also proposes using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to establish dimension weights and the Digital Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Index (DEEI) to support future empirical assessment and benchmarking. Cyprus is used as an illustrative small-economy context through which the framework’s relevance and practical applicability are examined. The conceptual analysis indicates that digital entrepreneurial performance cannot be understood through isolated indicators because weaknesses in infrastructure, skills, finance, innovation, institutions, internationalization, sustainability, or resilience can constrain the wider ecosystem. DEEAF contributes to the literature by integrating these dimensions within a single assessment architecture and by linking conceptual ecosystem analysis to a future measurement mechanism. The framework remains conceptual and requires empirical validation, expert-based AHP weighting, and implementation using national-level indicators.