Innovativeness: a bibliometric vision of the conceptual and intellectual structures and the past and future research directions

Abstract

The literature on the theme of innovativeness displays a multidimensional character and interrelates with diverse approaches and research perspectives. As from the early 1990s, the scientific literature on the theme began to undergo significant growth and resulting in researchers in this field encountering rising difficulties as they attempt to remain updated as regards the different research flows. Furthermore, the volume of international production rendered it equally difficult to identify the underlying intellectual and conceptual structures of this field. In this context, the present study stems from the application of a quantitative approach to these scientific outputs through the means of combining diverse bibliometric techniques, including the co-occurrence of keywords, bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis. This gathered and analysed 2523 of the scientific works available in the Web of Science, one of the most important global databases of scientific knowledge. This identified the origins of the current literature on innovativeness as well as its core justifications and leading intellectual and conceptual structures, including strategic and longitudinal perspectives on the development of this theme within the business studies field. We furthermore deployed, in a complementary approach, three different software applications: VOSviewer, SciMAT and Bibliometrix. Finally, based upon qualitative analysis, this study furthermore identifies a set of research opportunities that enable those approaching this field to plan, target and disseminate future research efforts.