The entrepreneurial process is filled with risk and uncertainty, and the window of opportunity may be closed in the twinkling of an eye. Moreover, new ventures lack the effective modes of thinking to instantly and flexibly respond to emergencies, and discover and utilize fleeting opportunities. Thus, developing effective decision thinking to rapidly respond to changing and unpredictable environments is critical to the survival and development of new ventures. In fact, environmental uncertainty, resource scarcity and cognitive limitations prevent entrepreneurs from implementing the original plans. It means that entrepreneurs must have the ability to instantly and efficiently adapt to a changing environment without their original plans. As a result, new ventures’ improvisation becomes an efficient way to instantly and flexibly respond to uncertainty. Although entrepreneurial improvisation research has gained momentum in the past decade, the literature is diverse and fragmented, thereby hindering the development of entrepreneurial improvisation as a promising research area. In fact, the analysis of the relevant literature has shown that there are no generally accepted definition and relatively convincing findings of entrepreneurial improvisation. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the latest research progress and development trend, and clarify existing problems and possible future research directions of entrepreneurial improvisation. Specifically, based on the 27 EI articles, we summarize the definition, antecedents and outcomes of entrepreneurial improvisation, and present an integrative definition of entrepreneurial improvisation together with new proposal for subdividing and measuring entrepreneurial improvisation. This paper also identifies four research directions that are worthy of further investigation:（1） to explore the classification of entrepreneurial improvisation;（2） to examine the impact of market environment and organizational factors on entrepreneurial improvisation;（3） to explore the effect of entrepreneurial resources on entrepreneurial improvisation;（4） to investigate the influence of entrepreneurship improvisation on sustaining innovation. This paper is designed to make several contributions. Firstly, this paper extends the perspective of entrepreneurship research. As an important driving force of economic development, entrepreneurial activities need a theoretical system that can guide them to make decisions in the rapidly changing environment. New ventures’ improvisation, namely spontaneously utilizing hand resources, becomes an efficient way to instantly and flexibly respond to uncertainty. Secondly, this paper deepens the theoretical understanding of entrepreneurial improvisation. Research on organizational improvisation is still in the initial stage, and little work has done to deeply understand the improvisation in entrepreneurship. We provide a systematic literature review of entrepreneurial improvisation, which gives the rationality and prospect of entrepreneurial improvisation research, thus being beneficial to the development of improvisation in entrepreneurship practice and research. Finally, this paper expands the scope and perspective of entrepreneurial improvisation research. We sort out the definitions, antecedents and outcomes of entrepreneurial improvisation by constructing an integrated framework, to provide a comprehensive and clear overview of relevant research. We also propose future research directions through identifying limitations of previous literature.