Browsing by Author "Alhubaish, Abdullah"

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The Role of AI Tools in Reshaping Barriers to Entrepreneurship: A Systematic Literature Review
(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) Alhubaish, Abdullah; Morlacchi, Piera
This dissertation investigates the role of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in reshaping barriers to entrepreneurship. While earlier research often presents AI as a simple enabler, this study adopts a more nuanced perspective, examining how AI removes, reconfigures, and introduces entrepreneurial constraints. A systematic literature review (SLR) of 79 sources published between 2015 and 2025—including 63 academic articles and 16 grey literature reports—was conducted using a structured coding framework. The review focused on how AI reshapes barriers, which applications drive these changes, its influence on business model innovation and product development, the risks of bias in large language models (LLMs), and the implications of divergent regulatory frameworks, as well as persisting gaps and future research directions. The analysis identifies a threefold dynamic. AI lowers traditional barriers such as high capital requirements, specialist expertise, and labor intensity; reconfigures entrepreneurial challenges by demanding new competencies in digital judgement, orchestration, and AI literacy; and introduces novel barriers, including algorithmic bias, regulatory fragmentation, and psychological pressures. Generative models and predictive analytics emerge as the most transformative applications, enabling ideation, prototyping, storytelling, and evidence-based decision-making. At a strategic level, AI accelerates business model innovation and iterative, data-driven product development, while raising concerns around ethics, intellectual property, and dependence on external infrastructures. This study contributes to knowledge by integrating academic and grey literature, reframing AI as a re-shaper rather than merely a remover of barriers and highlighting capability asymmetry and regulatory divergence as critical issues for research and practice. For entrepreneurs, the findings underscore the importance of AI literacy and responsible adoption as conditions for sustainable advantage. For policymakers, they emphasize the urgency of harmonized regulation and inclusive digital capacity-building. Overall, AI emerges as both an equalizer and a potential new gatekeeper in entrepreneurial ecosystems.
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