Abstract
A bibliometric approach was conducted to evaluate the global scientific outputs of open innovation based on literature in Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) database from 2003 to 2017, with the ultimate goal of assisting researchers to fulfil the potentiality of open innovation research and to establish future directions. Overall, 1,046 articles in 318 journals were analysed by research performance of countries, continents and institutes, authorship, journals, most cited articles, first articles, author-keywords, keywords plus and paper titles to identify relevant trends in this period. This study demonstrates that Europe was the most productive continent featured by Italy’s remarkable surge by 150% in total articles between 2016 and 2017. However, with respect to research performance by country, the USA came top with the highest total number of articles. The analysis of keywords groups in this study shows that while intangible assets were given decreasing attention, issues pertaining to business performance, firm openness and innovation capacity became foci in open innovation research. Articles were published by top journals which all featured the “management” field in their subject categories, indicating that open innovation spectrum was mainly explored in the field of management.
Highlights
Innovation has become a mounting concern for scholars from different disciplines (Fagerberg, 2004; Fagerberg & Verspagen, 2009; Martin, 2012)
The analysis of keywords groups in this study shows that while intangible assets were given decreasing attention, issues pertaining to business performance, firm openness and innovation capacity became foci in open innovation research
The analysis of the research performance by country, showed that among 60 countries involved in open innovation research, the USA remained the leading country with respect to all metrics: total articles, first author, corresponding author, single country and international collaboration
Summary
Innovation has become a mounting concern for scholars from different disciplines (Fagerberg, 2004; Fagerberg & Verspagen, 2009; Martin, 2012). The notion of “open innovation” was coined by Chesbrough (2003) and refers to a process in which firms seek to acquire ideas and resources from the external environment in conjunction with their internal resources It is contrasted with the traditional “close” innovation model, which calls for firms’ self-reliance solely on their own internal research and development efforts (Chesbrough, 2003). The most frequently used definition of “open innovation” is “the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and to expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively” (Chesbrough & Crowther, 2006). The coupled process, which refers to co-creation with complementary partners via alliances, cooperation and joint ventures (Enkel et al, 2009) was extensively explored (Kendall, Kendall, & Germonprez, 2006; Perkmann & Walsh, 2017; Von Hippel & Von Krogh, 2006)
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