A Research Journey from National Systems of Innovation to National Systems of Entrepreneurship: Introducing the Sextuple Helix

Abstract

National systems of innovation (NSI) have attracted substantial interest from public administrations, the scientific community and international organizations. Innovation is a key factor for countries to be competitive in the today’s global economy. Entrepreneurship is an innovation source that has gained importance in NSI research over the last few decades. This focus on entrepreneurship in the context of NSI has led scholars to propose novel concepts such as entrepreneurial ecosystems and the national system of entrepreneurship (NSE). This paper uses bibliometric methods and the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS CC) database to explore how entrepreneurship fits into NSI research and to study the increasing importance of entrepreneurship within this research field. The NSI conceptual framework is developed according to the most common keywords, and the most influential NSI studies are identified using the total number of citations and the ratio number of citations per year. Two sets of studies are analyzed: (1) older documents on traditional topics such as the origins and evolution of NSIs, the capacity of countries to innovate, and the relationships of institutions, different organizational forms, networking, production and competence building with innovation and (2) newer entrepreneurship research documents. Based on analysis of the most common keywords, the most influential studies and multiple entrepreneurship approaches, we propose a Sextuple Helix model as an analytical framework that brings together innovation and entrepreneurship.