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Informal businesses should be included in analyses of entrepreneurial ecosystems, a recent review argues. The case is not that every informal business has the same needs or should follow the same route to registration. Rather, informality is shaped by the institutions, networks, cultural practices, and market conditions that ecosystem research already examines.
What does it mean to include informal businesses in an entrepreneurial ecosystem?
An entrepreneurial ecosystem is the wider setting in which businesses operate: rules and institutions, access to markets and finance, social norms, and relationships that connect entrepreneurs to resources and support. Informal businesses are not necessarily outside that setting. They may be affected by its rules and gaps, and rely on some of the same networks and markets as formal firms.
A 2026 review described in an Inderscience publisher search excerpt reportedly covers 72 papers published between 2009 and 2025 and argues that informal businesses belong within the larger ecosystem. The available publisher record does not establish the review’s authors, detailed methods, or full findings, so that description should be treated as provisional. The figure of 72 refers to papers in the reported review corpus, not to the prevalence or economic weight of informal businesses. Inderscience publisher record
What does the broader review literature say?
Informality has varied causes
Tanya Munir and Sean Watts’s 2025 systematic review synthesizes 61 peer-reviewed articles published from 2009 through 2023. Its abstract connects informal entrepreneurship to ecosystem structures, including policy frameworks, social norms, and cultural practices. It identifies institutional voids, regulatory burdens, and limited access to formal finance among recurring drivers in the literature. These are patterns reported across studies, not a single explanation that applies to every business. Munir and Watts, 2025 review Review abstract
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Networks can cross the formal–informal boundary
The 2025 review describes entrepreneurs using both formal and informal networks to reach resources, markets, and legitimacy. Looking only at registered organizations or official support programs can therefore miss relationships that help businesses operate. It also means that informal networks should not be treated as a substitute for all formal services: the review identifies both kinds of connections as relevant.
An informal sub-ecosystem is emerging as a concept
Munir and Watts describe an “informal entrepreneurial sub-ecosystem” with its own actors, norms, and logic. Their synthesis identifies improved governance, targeted support, and ecosystem-level coordination as factors relevant to transitions toward formality. It does not establish one policy pathway as effective everywhere, or show that formalization is the right immediate outcome for every enterprise.
What does the Nigeria study illustrate?
A 2020 qualitative study by Paul Agu Igwe and colleagues offers a geographically specific example. The researchers interviewed 20 business owners and held two focus groups with business association leaders. The study’s abstract identifies formal and informal rules, market access, and family as elements that support knowledge flows, networking, capital, and resource sharing. Igwe and colleagues, 2020 study abstract
Those interviews and focus groups provide an illustration of how ecosystem relationships can matter to informal businesses in Nigeria; they are not a representative estimate of Nigerian businesses, nor do they establish that the same relationships work the same way elsewhere.
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How to compare policies or local cases
The review themes can guide a case comparison, but they are not a validated universal scoring system. Examine the same dimensions in each setting and keep local context visible:
- Rules and institutions: What regulatory requirements, governance arrangements, or institutional gaps shape business activity?
- Finance and markets: How accessible are formal financial services and markets, and what alternatives do businesses use?
- Networks and legitimacy: Which formal and informal relationships connect entrepreneurs to resources, customers, and recognition?
- Culture and community: How do social norms, family, and community resources affect business knowledge-sharing and support?
- Support and transitions: If a move toward formality is a goal, what governance, targeted support, or coordination is available?
These dimensions reflect the 2025 review and the Nigeria study. They help identify what to investigate; they do not predict a particular policy’s results.
What the evidence does and does not establish
The 2025 review provides a synthesis of scholarship published through 2023, while the Nigeria study supplies a qualitative case. The reported 2026 review may extend the literature through 2025, but its full record is not established in the available publisher excerpt. None of these figures measures the overall number or economic contribution of informal businesses. The supported conclusion is narrower: informal entrepreneurship is connected to ecosystem conditions and deserves analysis within that frame, rather than automatic treatment as peripheral.
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