Beyond Registration: Business Demography, Sectoral Concentration and Early Survival of MSMEs in a Peripheral Colombian Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

This article examines how administrative business records can strengthen place-based support for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in peripheral entrepreneurial ecosystems. It develops a structured evidence map and an exploratory business-demography analysis of Chamber of Commerce records from Valledupar, Colombia. The evidence map organises MSME constraints into formalisation, finance, digitalisation, managerial capabilities, innovation and markets, sustainability and governance. The registry analysis describes active business structure, sectoral and territorial concentration, cancellations, early survival and exploratory cancellation hazards. The active classified base contained 25,444 units; 97.7% were microenterprises. Commerce and repair accounted for 44.8%, and the core municipality of Valledupar concentrated 70.9%. Cancellation records were dominated by administrative clean-up (67.1%), requiring careful separation of registry updating from economic closure. Nevertheless, cancelled firms showed early vulnerability: the median duration was 5.03 years and 48.9% cancelled before five years. The article contributes to small business research by linking evidence mapping, business demography and territorial policy sequencing. It argues that MSME support should move beyond registration counts towards early-warning systems, capability-building routes and differentiated sectoral interventions.