What we (do not) know about research in the strategic management of technological innovation?

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study aims to analyse the different approaches to researching the strategic management of technological innovation through a Systematic Literature Review. The analysis thus focuses on the 59 articles returned from the ISI Web of Knowledge Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), after our search of publications in the ‘Management’ domain. This literature divides into two major thematic areas (strategic management and technological innovation) while revealing how performance studies predominate, especially those applied to the development of innovation and its sources. Two areas of lesser interest in the field of technological innovation are diffusion/adoption and commercialisation while these always interlink with strategy formulation. By dividing the analysis into three periods (1987–1996, 1997–2006 and 2007–2016), we may conclude that, in the first period (1987–1996), the study of the three main topics in technological innovation (development, types and sources of innovation) links to strategy formulation while in the following periods essentially move on to performance. Despite the growing interest in recent years on topics such as the internal analysis of innovation types, few studies detail with industry analysis, strategy implementation or the environment and we therefore also set out possible future lines of research.