Innovation Ecosystem Research: Emerging Trends and Future Research

Abstract

The innovation ecosystem term has increasingly been attracting the interest of scholars and practitioners for fifteen years. Contrary to the flourishing landscape, knowledge in this field is criticized as being fragmented. While past reviews revealed the conceptual and theoretical connections between innovation ecosystem and other related concepts, there is still a lack of comprehensive appreciation of the intellectual structure of state-of-the-art innovation ecosystem studies, hindering future research in this domain. To fill this void, this study utilized a systematic literature review approach combining bibliographic coupling and content analysis methods. Drawing on 136 studies reflecting the core and latest knowledge of innovation ecosystem literature, this study identifies five streams of the current innovation ecosystem research (i.e., technology innovation, platform innovation ecosystem, regional development, innovation ecosystem conceptualization and theorization, and entrepreneurship and innovation). Suggestions for future research are distilled via systematic analysis and discussion of these streams. Contributions of this study lie in decoding the intellectual structure of current innovation ecosystem research and offering targeted recommendations for future research.

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