Open Eco-Innovation Research Landscape: A Systematic Review and Future Outlook

Abstract

The paper carries out a systematic review of the literature on the emerging themes in open eco-innovation (OE), and most specifically on the role of internal and external knowledge sourcing for firms. Open innovation runs contrary to the individualistic mentality of traditional corporate R&D implementation while embracing external cooperation in a complex world. Our main motivation for the study is to assess and characterise literature that represents radical transformation toward accelerating co‐development of sustainable innovations. Our review points to the role of the open eco-innovation research landscape as an emerging research domain of potential contributions to sustainable industrial development. Specifically, in this systematic analysis, we apply exploratory, bibliometric, and network visualization techniques to characterize the available knowledge in the field. We trace the growth trajectory of this emerging literature and map the knowledge base of the OE research field. Based on the data from our study we developed four phases of knowledge domain development and recognised that OE is at the acceleration phase. We emphasized that analytic knowledge base is one of the basic ingredients of an open eco-innovation model in addition to synthetic and symbolic knowledge bases. Our article also brought to the fore the emerging important role of intermediaries in brokering eco-innovation at the firm and sectoral levels with a lot of implications for policymaking. Finally, we highlighted what might seem to be budding theoretical perspectives underlining open eco-innovation in the industrial sector.