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Technological innovation research in the last six decades: a bibliometric

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Technological innovation research Technological

innovation
in the last six decades: research

a bibliometric analysis
Morteza Akbari, Maryam Khodayari, Armin Khaleghi,
Mozhgan Danesh and Hamid Padash
Received 1 May 2020
Faculty of Entrepreneurship, University of Tehran, Revised 13 June 2020
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran 22 August 2020
Accepted 14 September 2020

Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to explore the evolutionary trajectories of technological innovation using 1,361
documents to determine the most cited documents, influential authors, prominent journals and leading
countries in the field of technological innovation research.
Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, the intellectual structure of technological innovation
literature was studied using bibliometric co-occurrence and co-citation analyses. The authors focused on the
1,361 documents in this research stream published between 1961 and 2019.
Findings – The findings show that researchers do not appropriately draw on theoretical perspectives external
to the field to study different dimensions of technological innovation. This study reveals six distinct areas
within the literature: sources of innovation, environmental innovation and technological innovation,
investment, economic growth of countries, technological innovation systems for sustainable development,
innovation system, research and development and competitiveness.
Originality/value – This study investigates the foundations of the conception, themes and research
communities within the technological innovation domain. This paper found strong evidence that technological
innovation is one of the keys to the research area in innovation studies.
Keywords Technological innovation, Bibliometric review, Web of science, Co-citation analysis, Keyword co-
occurrence analysis, Thematic evolution
Paper type Research paper

Highlight
(1) The data came from the Web of Science Core Collection database.
(2) A bibliometric overview of research in technological innovation is presented.
(3) The work shows a significant increase in technological innovation research.
(4) Current technological innovation research can be linked to six “research trends.”

1. Introduction
The study of technological innovation stands among the most productive realms of
investigation within the management and innovation scopes (Pan et al., 2019). Over the past
three decades, the importance of technological innovation within the area of the business has
been considerably increased. Interestingly, the significance of technological innovation is
associated with the competitiveness impact of the firms (Afuah, 2002; Chatzoglou and
Chatzoudes, 2018; Ortega, 2010; Shan and Jolly, 2012), sustainable growth (Santana et al.,
2015), firm growth (Mart
ınez-Alonso et al., 2019) and economic effects (Gold, 1986; Steil et al.,
2002). Recently, technological innovation progress has led to many reforms in business
strategies (Danvila-del-Valle et al., 2019). Technological innovation is also associated with
process and product innovations (Geldes et al., 2017; Mothe and Nguyen-Thi, 2012). Some
research specified that technological innovation might have provided sustainable European Journal of Innovation
Management
competitive advantages. Academic scholars have tried to find the relationship between © Emerald Publishing Limited
1460-1060
innovation and the firm’s performance (de Visser et al., 2010). Some studies indicate that DOI 10.1108/EJIM-05-2020-0166
EJIM technological innovation is a critical factor to business success (Razavi et al., 2016; Tsai, 2004).
As Choi and his colleagues have claimed, technological innovations in a knowledge-based
economy are tracked by most companies as a core approach to business continuity and
growth (Choi et al., 2016). Technological innovation is a procedure that contains the interplay
of multiple sources. It is a complex and multidimensional concept, which cannot be directly
measured (Guan and Ma, 2003). Success in technology innovation depends on the
organization’s capabilities, organizational innovation (Le Bas et al., 2015), as well as some
areas of marketing communications (Wagner et al., 2017), learning, resource allocation,
production, organization and strategic planning (Guan et al., 2006). Therefore, a business
reflects its technological innovation capabilities by various indicators, which cannot solely be
expressed by any single-dimension scales (Chiesa et al., 1996). Research and development
(R&D) are not enough for technical advancement. Therefore, it is necessary to develop policy
tools to increase enterprise investment in new and emerging technologies as core factors in
economic growth (Huisman and Kort, 2003).
Recently, new research topics emerged in the technological innovation area. Given the
importance of technological innovation and the increasing number of publications in this
field, it is necessary to evaluate its characteristics and intellectual framework. Furthermore,
regardless of the recent growing interest in technological innovation, the existing knowledge
of bibliometric review (BR) about technological innovation is not sufficient. A body of BR
investigations in the innovation area such as innovation and entrepreneurship (Gautam,
2019), innovation system (IS) (Souzanchi Kashani and Roshani, 2019), technology and
innovation management (Huang et al., 2019; Meyer-Br€otz et al., 2018), social innovation
€ g and Esen, 2019) and innovation adoption (van Oorschot et al., 2018) have been
(Ozba
conducted previously, Also, other researches are directed and published in the field of
technological innovation (Chatterjee and Sahasranamam, 2018; Yeo et al., 2015).
However, to the best of our knowledge, no research has been conducted on key structures
of technological innovation. Therefore, current research aims to analyze the technological
innovation scope to fill this gap. This paper presents a BR by reviewing the documents
published in Clarivate Analytics – Web of Science (WoS) database using the VOSviewer and
Bibliometrix software from 1960–2019. We claim that this paper is one of the very few studies
that comprehensively investigates contemporary technological innovation and its logical
foundations through a BR lens. Co-citation and co-occurrence methods are widely used
techniques for considering coherent study areas (Lopez et al., 2019; Shiau et al., 2017; Small,
1973; Wang et al., 2018). We used these methods to delineate the fundamental structures of
technological innovation in the literature.
The objectives of this study are as follows:
(1) underline the subfields that contain the fundamental structure of technological
innovation field;
(2) map the basic structure of the technological innovation considering its subfields
relationships;
(3) visualize the themes of technological innovation area; and
(4) map the changes in keywords in technological innovation publications.
To address the above-mentioned objectives, a bibliometric study was conducted using the
two-hybrid technique in combination with co-citation clustering and keyword-based
analysis. These techniques are arranged to aid the structural division, which is affecting
the research on technological innovation and co-citation as well as co-occurrence analyses as
a section of the bibliometric (Callon et al., 1983; Small, 1973). The keywords’ co-occurrence
helps us to quantify and visualize the technological innovation’s thematic evolution.
 The research methods employed in this study are described in Section 2. Section 3 includes Technological
analyses and the results based on the number of studies per year; co-citation analysis, co- innovation
occurrence analysis and theme evolution in technological innovation. Section 4 discusses the
findings and conclusion; finally, Section 5 contains potential fields of research for future
research
endeavors, and Section 6 presents the implications of theory and practice.

2. Method
2.1 Database
The primary stage of BR comprises recognizing those databases that would be more
appropriate for the research (Albort-Morant and Ribeiro-Soriano, 2016). The data used in this
research were gathered from the Clarivate Analytics – WoS database. The WoS contains
more than 15,000 journals and 50,000,000 documents ordered in 251 subject categories and
151 subject areas (Merig
o et al., 2015; Merig
o and Yang, 2017). Generally, it is expected that
the WoS material holds the highest-quality standards of research. Nevertheless, many other
databases such as Scopus and Google Scholar, which are internationally branded, exist
(Merig
o et al., 2015). The WoS database was chosen because it retrieved more entries for our
intended search conditions than other sources, and it provided a larger sample (Dias, 2019).
The WoS has been used across a comprehensive range of bibliometric studies and provided
broad coverage in social sciences, arts and humanities (Mulet-Forteza et al., 2019).
BR uses bibliographical elements quantitatively to help researchers analyze and recognize
special meanings around a topic (Danvila-del-Valle et al., 2019). BR is used as a base aimed at
the qualitative analysis of the essential literature (Suominen et al., 2019). BR was first
described as “the implication of mathematics and statistical technique to books and other
media of communication” (Groos and Pritchard, 1969) and subsequently described as “the
quantitative analysis of the bibliographic characteristic of a body of literature” (Kumar et al.,
2019). BR uses a quantitative method for the description, evaluation and monitoring of
published documents. BR has already been used in former studies to investigate different
areas such as inventiveness (Castillo-Vergara et al., 2018), technological innovation in China
and India (Chatterjee and Sahasranamam, 2018), e-government (Dias, 2019), global firms birth
(Dzikowski, 2018), key account management (Kumar et al., 2019), open innovation (Le et al.,
2019) and operations research and management science (Merig
o and Yang, 2017).
Furthermore, in the area of business and management, BR has been used for analyzing
the trend of journals such as OMEGA (Wang et al., 2020).

2.2 Procedure and data

We decided to refer to those papers that were published in high-ranked journals as they are
perceived to be “qualified sources of knowledge.” With a competitive evaluation, they are
providing findings with high reliability (Ramos-Rodr
ıguez and Ru
ız-Navarro, 2004). Thus, we
did not evaluate book chapters and other such documents that are found in databases. This
research condition includes all journal papers that contain the expression
“TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION*” in “title” as it is the question of this study.
To achieve a wide range of data from journals, we searched “all years,” and the earliest
documents we obtained from the WoS were from 1961. The bibliographic records consisted of
3,462 documents in total, which were collected on October 1, 2019. The data set included 1,516
documents, and 89.77% were published in English. There were a total of 155 documents in
other languages such as French (27), Russian (seven), Croatian (one), Spanish (54), German
(15), Japanese (two), Czech (one), Portuguese (36), Italian (nine), Swedish (two) and Danish
(one); which were not included in this study. Consequently, a collection of 1,361 published
documents from 1961–2019 was collected. As the WoS database showed, the sample
EJIM contained documents from various areas of research. Most of the documents were published
in “Business Economics” (659), “Engineering” (209), “Environmental Sciences Ecology” (147),
“Science Technology” (117) and “Operations Research Management Science” (95). Also,
“Management” (363), “Business” (255), “Economics” (192) and “Environmental Studies” (98)
were the most productive area of the WoS category and contained about 74% of total
documents in our collection. The main organizations in our sample were “Harvard
University” (17 records), “MIT” (17), “University of California Berkeley” (14), “Stanford
University” (13), the “University of Utrecht” (13), “Georgia Institute Technology” (12),
“Zhejiang University” (11) and the “University of Manchester” (10).

2.3 Analytical methods

2.3.1 Co-citation analysis. Co-citation analysis is the most popular relational technique in
€
bibliometric studies (Ozçinar, 2015). It assumes that there is a connection between two
documents if they are both cited in the same paper (Small, 1973). Co-citation analyses
comprise author, journal and articles to analyze. Indeed, this method links published
documents to illustrate a meaningful map of published data (Dzikowski, 2018). It is useable in
diverse research areas to understand subdomains, progress and changes in a scientific
discipline. This technique is recognized in various disciplines containing self-service
technology (Shin and Perdue, 2019), social media (Leung et al., 2017), social networks (Shiau
et al., 2017), open innovation (Randhawa et al., 2016), ISs (Liu et al., 2015) and innovation
adoption (van Oorschot et al., 2018). The capabilities of this method, in addition to its different
applications in research, make it a brilliant method for disclosing the structure of
technological innovation studies and changes in this domain.
2.3.2 Co-occurrence analysis. The co-occurrence method uses the most frequent keywords
used in papers to assess the conceptual structure of a specific context (Callon et al., 1983). As
keywords provide information around the central content of documents, a keyword network
analysis can be employed to display research topics, conceptual building blocks and
conceptual structure of the research as well as the evolving research frontiers and evolution

of concept (Zupic and Cater, 2015). Some researchers have used the co-occurrence method in
their studies (Akbari et al., 2020). Co-occurrence of keywords enables the researchers to
measure and map the thematic evolution of the technological innovation area.
2.3.3 Theme evolution. Theme evolution is the evolution analysis of regularities,
relationships, paths and trends of a topic in which the content, intensity and change in the
structure are detected during a period (Wu et al., 2017). Indeed, the theme evolution method
recognizes changes in the keywords over different periods (Wu et al., 2017). The theme
evolution has been used by some researchers (Wu et al., 2017; Ye et al., 2015).

2.4 Software
2.4.1 VOSviewer. VOSviewer was applied to simplify the relationships by producing
networks and maps based on the data exported from the WoS database. VOSviewer is a
permitted program developed by Van Eck and Waltman and is usually used for creating,
visualizing and exploring scientific bibliometric maps (Van Eck and Waltman, 2009; Wang
and Yang, 2019). VOSviewer has been used across a comprehensive range of previous
bibliometric studies (Dzikowski, 2018; Mulet-Forteza et al., 2019).
2.4.2 Bibliometrix®. The Bibliometrix® software is an R-tool that was established by Aria
and Cuccurullo (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017) for bibliometric mapping of the documents. In the
R software environment, other packages have been recently published in the official
repository addressing bibliometric. Strategic diagrams and theme evolution were built using
Bibliometrix program. The research method is summarized in Figure 1.
 2.Literature Review
1.Research Objectives 3.Contribution of Study
(Methodology)

-recognize the most dominant authors,

the most cited documents, top prominent Stage 1. Bibliometric map analysis: VOSviewer software 1. Explored influential aspects, such as
countries, and the most prominent 1. Number of publications per year publications, countries, cited papers, authors
journals in the technological innovation; 2. The most cited papers and journals
-highlight the subfields that constitute the 3. The top influential authors 2. Identification of two research stream:
4. The top prominent Countries/Regions (i)Theories and Significance of
intellectual structure of the technological
5. Most prominent journals Technological Innovation
innovation research; Stage 2. Bibliometric document co-citation analysis:
-map the intellectual structure of the -Absorption capacity
VOSviewer software
technological innovation to discuss the -Dynamic capabilities & complementarities
Stage 3. Bibliometric co-occurrence Keyword Analysis:
relationships among the subfields; -Resource-based view
VOSviewer software
-visualize the themes of the sustainable -Schumpeterian theory of “creative
Stage 4. Visualization of themes: Bibliometrix®
technology area destruction”
Stage 5. Theme evolution: Bibliometrix®
-map the changes in keywords in -Evolutionary Economic theory
technological innovation area. (ii)Innovation Systems
-National innovation systems
-Sectoral innovation systems
-Technological innovation systems
Step 1.
Step 2.
ISI Web of Science Selection of Article Searched,
database based on 2 level
1361 articles found

First level
ISI Web of Science Final sample:
A. Searched with word: Select English-language articles
“Technological Innovation*" 1. During period of
2. During period of 1961- 2019, found 1516 journal 1961- 2019, found
1361 articles
papers which 155 of them were not in the English
language
Technological
research
innovation

Methodological
Figure 1.

approach
EJIM 3. Results
In this section, the findings achieved from the survey are presented. This section is divided
into six subsections, which provide conclusions on the number of documents per year,
document co-citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, theme visualization and
theme evolution.

3.1 Publication trends

This section indicates the critical conclusions found in the bibliometric analysis in the WoS
database for the technological innovation papers from 1961–2019 (October). WoS has
published and indexed about 1,520 studies until 2019, within which there are 1,361 articles, 97
book chapters, 54 proceedings paper and eight early accesses. All these papers have been
cited for 22,457 times.
The growing number of studies on technological innovation between 1961 and 2019 and
the chronological distribution found three phases in the publication period (Figure 2). The
initial phase is from 1961–1985. The number of published documents had mildly increased
from 1986–2005 and, finally, in the third phase, the number of documents raised dramatically
starting from 2006. As it is shown in Figure 2, the total number of studies has an increasing
trend, and also the average citation per year has a growing trend.

3.2 Document co-citation analysis

Cited references to technological innovation are illustrated in Figure 3. In this network, there
are 46,134 cited references with at least 20 citations each, which made the number of articles
reach 52 nodes. Based on the co-citation investigation, two clusters were detected. As
illustrated in Figure 3, each cluster is in a different color. Figure 3 shows a relatively
comprehensible network in which clusters A and B are interconnected through the “Rogers
diffusion of innovations book,” located at the center of the network (Rogers, 2003).
3.2.1 Cluster A: sources of innovation. By reviewing the publications categorized in cluster
A using VOSviewer software, we found that they are all about sources of innovation. In the
following, we reviewed several articles in this cluster and presented the authors’ views on the
origins of innovation (Table 1). According to Figure 3, Pavitt’s essay is closely related to
Rogers’ book on the diffusion of innovations. Pavitt’s article is mostly focused on the sources
of innovation, while Rogers identifies the diversity of sources of innovation (Rogers, 2003).
Pavitt categorizes most large industrial enterprises in light of changing technology according
to technology resources and user requirements. The purpose of this sorting is to categorize
the styles of the invention along with the knowledge flow among them (Pavitt, 1984). Supplier
dominated includes traditional industrial firms such as fabrics that rely on external
innovation resources for the company, production-intensive, which means large companies
producing rudimentary supplies and user durables. Innovation resources may be internal or
external. Science-based advanced companies that rely on R&D and academic studies as
internal resources include industries such as pharmacy. Companies in this division are
developing new products or processes and have a high degree of patent assignment, trade
secrets and implicit technical knowledge (Pavitt, 1984).
Other researchers (Cohen and Levinthal, 1989, 1990; Zahra and George, 2002) have argued
that organizations need to enhance their absorption capacity to innovate. Cohen and
Levinthal (1989), for the first time, defined absorption capacity as the ability of a company to
distinguish between the value of exterior, new information and capturing and using it to
achieve business goals. From their perspective, the absorption capacity mainly depends on
the organization’s prior knowledge and contextual diversity. Therefore, enterprise R&D
investments play a key role in developing and enhancing their absorption capacity (Cohen
and Levinthal, 1989, 1990). In this regard, they stated that companies invest in R&D not only
 140
Technological
120 innovation
100 research
80

60

40

20

-20 Figure 2.
Publications trends
Total Studies (TS) TC/TS % of 1361 Linear (TC/TS)

Figure 3.
Co-citation network of
cited references

to create innovation but also to learn from entrants and external knowledge sources (Cohen
and Levinthal, 1989). Other researchers (Zahra and George, 2002) explored several other areas
within the organizations that could lead to the development and upgrading of the
organization’s absorption capacity. Zahra and George (2002) introduced the concept of
absorption capacity more broadly and introduced binary forms of absorption capacity:
potential and realized (Zahra and George, 2002). Their new definition of absorption is a set of
organizational processes by which knowledge is produced, adapted, modified and applied to
generate dynamic organizational capabilities. Teece and colleagues initially defined the
concept of dynamic capabilities as the firm’s capability to integrate, make and reconfigure
interior and exterior competencies to adapt quickly in changing environments. The basic
premise of the framework presented by Teece and co-workers (Teece et al., 1997) is that a
firm’s core competencies must be used to generate short-term competitive opportunities to
EJIM Clusters Authors/references TC Clusters Authors/references TC

Cluster A (35 Cohen and Levinthal (1990) 78 Cluster B (17 Bergek et al. (2008) 58
items) Nelson and Winter (1982) 58 items) Hekkert et al. (2007) 54
Barney (1991) 53 Markard and Truffer 43
(2008)
Teece (1986) 45 Carlsson and Stankiewicz 41
(1991)
Schumpeter (1934) 38 Rogers (2003) 35
Teece et al. (1997) 37 Lundvall (1992) 33
Dosi (1982) 35 Jacobsson and Bergek 31
(2004)
Schumpeter (1942) 35 Nelson (1993) 31
Damanpour (1991) 33 Carlsson et al. (2002) 27
Fornell and Larcker (1981) 29 Jacobsson and Johnson 24
(2000)
March (1991) 29 Freeman (1987) 23
Griliches (1990) 28 Geels (2002) 22
Baron and Kenny (1986) 27 Markard et al. (2012) 22
Chesbrough (2003) 27 Binz et al. (2014) 21
Utterback and Abernathy 26 Jacobsson and Bergek 21
(1975) (2011)
Cohen and Levinthal (1989) 25 Malerba (2002) 20
Henderson and Clark 25 Negro et al. (2007) 20
(1990)
Schmookler (1966) 25
Wernerfelt (1984) 24
Grant (1996) 23
Abernathy and Utterback 22
(1978)
Burns and Stalker (1961) 22
Pavitt (1984) 22
Porter (1990) 22
Rogers (1995) 22
Tushman and Anderson 22
(1986)
Kogut and Zander (1992) 21
Leonard-Barton (1992) 21
Podsakoff et al. (2003) 21
Rogers (1983) 21
Zahra and George (2002) 21
Christensen (1997) 20
Porter (1985) 20
Table 1. Rogers and Shoemaker 20
Clusters from cited (1971)
references Zaltman et al. (1973) 20

achieve long-term competitive advantage. They outlined factors that determine which of the
three leading companies, followers and a company that has value-creating capabilities for
customers will benefit from innovation. These key elements include the ability to duplicate
innovation (competitors’ ability to copy) and the ownership of complementary properties
(Teece, 1986). The concept of dynamic capabilities emphasizes the rapid responses to
changing environmental conditions. While Nelson and Winter (1982) have taken a resource-
based view (RBV) to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage, they associated the
concept of dynamic capabilities to the RBV and the concept of “routines” in the evolutionary
theories of the organization (Nelson and Winter (1982). In this regard, Barney (1991) views the Technological
RBV as a factor for competitive advantage. He argues that the resources, assets and innovation
capabilities of organizations heterogeneous, and this heterogeneity creates a competitive
advantage for organizations (Barney, 1991).
research
Porter has outlined low-cost and differentiation advantages to achieve a competitive
advantage over other organizations. The low-cost advantage means that an organization
provides products and services similar to other organizations at a lower cost to customers.
The advantage of differentiation is when the company offers different and better products
and services than its competitors (Porter, 1985). Furthermore, Chesbrough (2003) has
introduced the concept of “open innovation” by which firms can use internal and external
ideas to achieve technological innovation and advancement (Chesbrough, 2003).
In a book titled “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” Christensen (1997) explains that there are
innovations that lead to the failure of large, innovative companies. He has divided the types of
innovations into two categories: sustaining and disruptive. Sustaining refers to innovations
that do not expressively affect current bazaars, which involve two types of evolutionary and
revolutionary innovations. An innovation that advances a product on the present
marketplace in ways that clients suppose is called evolutionary innovation; however,
revolutionary innovation is an innovation that is unpredicted and does not affect present
bazaars. Disruptive innovation is also an innovation that generates a new marketplace by
presenting a different set of values and unpredictably dominates the existing market. In this
regard, Joseph Schumpeter coined the term “creative destruction.” The concept of “creative
destruction” describes the creative entry of entrepreneurs into the marketplace, with their
entry as a force for long-term economic growth leading to the failure of existing companies
with monopoly power (Schumpeter, 1942). Schumpeter (1934) stated that as an innovator, an
entrepreneur creates profitable opportunities by creating a new product, production process
or marketing strategy (Schumpeter, 1934).
3.2.2 Cluster B: technological innovation systems. This cluster of publications includes
documents focusing on ISs and specifically on technological ISs (TISs). Additionally,
different types of systems and their functionality were examined by researchers, which are
represented in Table 1. Rogers (2003) describes how, why and at what rate ideas and
technologies are developed by presenting the theory of innovation diffusion. He argues that
four key elements are involved in the development of ideas: novelty, communication
networks, time and the social system. Dissemination of innovation is a process that happens
over time between participants in a social setting (Rogers, 2003). This process is highly
dependent on individuals. In this regard, the concept of “innovation system” was introduced
by Lundvall (Lundvall, 1985). The literature of this approach was developed in the late 1990s
and was strengthened in recent decades. There are three approaches to ISs in this cluster:
national (Freeman, 1987; Lundvall, 1992; Nelson, 1993), sectoral (Malerba, 2002) and
technological (Binz et al., 2014; Carlsson and Stankiewicz, 1991; Freeman, 1995; Markard and
Truffer, 2008). The IS a set of knowledge-driven institutions whose interactions with each
other determine the innovative performance of firms in each country (Nelson, 1993).
Components of an IS are performers, grids and institutes (Carlsson and Stankiewicz, 1991).
The idea of a TIS was presented as part of a broader theoretic school called the IS approach.
The basic idea of this approach is that the factors influencing technological developments not
only are found in specific organizations or research institutions but also in a comprehensive
public construction in which organizations and knowledge institutions are located
(Lundvall, 1988). A TIS is an active system of factors that interact in a definite economic/
industrial part under a specific organizational substructure and are involved in the
construction, distribution and application of technology (Carlsson and Stankiewicz, 1991).
Hekkert et al. have outlined functions for a TIS (Hekkert et al., 2007). These roles include
entrepreneurial actions, information expansion, conducting research, knowledge
EJIM dissemination with networks, market shaping, resource mobilization, legitimacy and
preventing change resistance.

3.3 Co-occurrence keyword analysis

The publications in the field of technological innovation have keywords starting from 1961. A
total of 1,361 documents by records of keywords from 1961–2019 are investigated. In this
section, to illustrate the core construction of the keyword co-occurrence grid, those with at
least eight keyword occurrences have been demonstrated in Figure 4. The keywords were
grouped into six clusters, and each cluster is elucidated in detail (Table 2). To interpret and
label the clusters, Kovacs et al. (2015) we downloaded the WoS dataset for the documents
characterized in the figure and listed the most frequent terms in the keywords, title and
abstract sectors of the references per cluster. According to keywords in the first cluster
including absorption capacity, dynamic capabilities, R&D, product innovation and
development, revolutionary innovation, competitive advantage, RBV, technological
innovation capability, strategic management, this cluster refers to “sources of innovation.”
The next cluster is about “implementing technological and environmental innovations and
investing in them,” which will ultimately lead to economic growth. This cluster includes
keywords in the environmental field, including pollution, energy efficiency, renewable
energy, consumption, CO2 emissions, industry and investment keywords such as foreign
direct investment, incentives and economic growth. The third cluster contains keywords
related to the formation of “TIS for sustainable development.” The fourth cluster is grouped
by keywords such as capabilities, systems, technology, organizations, decision-making,
training, information, information technology, innovation, adoption, products, services and
quality with emphasis on innovation. The fourth cluster contains keywords related to the
“innovation system.” The fifth and sixth clusters were mainly focused on “research and
development” and “competition,” respectively.

Figure 4.
Network of cited
keyword co-occurrence
Cluster Keywords and topic
Technological
innovation
Cluster I 39 items: absorptive capacity, absorptive-capacity, antecedents, business, capabilities, Chinese research
firms, competition, competitive advantage, cooperation, dynamic capabilities, exploitation,
exploration, failure, financial performance, firm, firm performance, integration, knowledge
transfer, management, market orientation, moderating role, networks, organization,
organizational innovation, orientation, performance, perspective, product development, product
innovation, R&D, radical innovation, RBV, search, strategic alliances, strategic management,
strategy, success, technological innovation capabilities, technological innovation capability;
Topic: SOURCES OF INNOVATION
Cluster II 36 items: China, CO2 emissions, consumption, countries, demand, economic growth, economic-
growth, economics, efficiency, empirical-evidence, energy efficiency, environmental regulation,
foreign direct investment (FDI), growth, incentives, indicators, industry, investment, models,
patent, patents, patterns, pollution-control, productivity, renewable energy, science, sector,
spillovers, technical change, technological change, technological innovation, technological
innovations, technology innovation, trade, uncertainty, United States
Topic: ENVIRONMENTAL INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION,
INVESTMENT, ECONOMIC GROWTH OF COUNTRIES
Cluster III 25 items: construction, developing-countries, diffusion, dynamics, energy, entrepreneurship,
evolution, framework, globalization, institutions, knowledge, lessons, market, multilevel,
perspective, Netherlands, policy, power, renewable energy technology, strategies, sustainability,
sustainability transitions, sustainable development, technological innovation system,
technological innovation systems, transitions
Topic: TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION SYSTEMS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Cluster 23 items: adoption, behavior, capability, decision-making, design, determinants, education,
IV environment, governance, impact, implementation, information, information technology,
innovation, internet, model, organizations, product, quality, services, system, systems,
technology; Topic: INNOVATION SYSTEM
Cluster V 8 items: collaboration, empirical-analysis, firms, research-and-development, resources, size,
SMEs, UK
Topic: RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT Table 2.
Cluster 1 item: competitiveness Core topic recognized
VI Topic: COMPETITIVENESS in each cluster

3.4 Theme visualization

As a large number of keywords only emerged a few times, they are improbably having had
significant effects on the main themes of technological innovation. We just included the
keywords that are appearing two times to imply the main themes in the analysis. Strategic
diagrams are constructed by Bibliometrix (Figure 5) to investigate the most underscored
themes in technological innovation for each sub-period (1961–1999 and 2000–2019). The
extremely related keywords are accumulated in clusters, and the themes are titled using the
keywords with the uppermost degree (Wang et al., 2020). According to the Callon and co-
workers (Callon et al., 1991), parts A and B of Figure 5 are divided into four-quarters that show
diverse forms of themes (Cobo et al., 2011). The first quarter themes are highly concentrated
and have good interior and exterior relations. The themes of this quarter are known as a
motor theme.
In the second quarter, the themes are with low concentration and high density. This
quarter indicates that the themes have well-developed inner links but inadequate exterior
links. These themes are highly developed and isolated. In the third quarter, themes have both
slight concentration and slight density, representing weak interior and exterior relations.
These are recognized as emerging or declining themes. The fourth quarter comprises themes
with a high concentration and low density that represent themes with weak internal links
but significant external links. They are recognized as basic and transversal themes
(Cobo et al., 2011). In the following strategic diagram analysis, according to a number of
EJIM

Figure 5.
Strategic diagrams in
technological
innovation
documents, the themes with the greatest number of publications fall into the fourth quarter Technological
as basic themes. Therefore, in the years from 1961–1999, companies, determinants and innovation
performance are in the fourth quarter (basic and transversal themes) because of the high
number of publications (Table 3). On the other hand, depending on the number of citations,
research
the most frequently cited themes fall into the first or fourth quarter. Consequently, except for
the themes that came in the fourth quarter, management, strategy and adoption have had a
high number of citations and been in the first quarter with the Motor themes. According to
Table 3, in years from 2000–2019, it is observed that R&D, knowledge, firms were placed in
the fourth quarter (basic and transversal themes) of the strategy map. It is because of the
high number of publications and management, model, impact, as a result of the high number
of citations in the first quarter (the motor themes). In each period, the number of keywords is
not the same. Indeed, keywords evolve to describe the content of technological innovation
documents. As new topics emerge in the field, related keywords will appear, and previous
keywords will disappear.
On the other hand, some of these keywords remained unchanged over time. For example,
firms, strategy, performance, management, economics have been unchanged in these two
periods. However, other themes such as equilibrium, incentives, organizational innovation,
market, determinants have only been in the previous period and were disappeared in the new
era. Furthermore, some of the themes such as industry, systems, knowledge, R&D, impacts,
economic growth, investment and perspective are new themes that have only emerged in the
new era, reflecting the emergence of new topics in the field of technological innovation.

3.5 Theme evolution: mapping of the changes in keywords in technological innovation

This section discovers the main themes in each sub-period in the technological innovation
field and surveys how these themes in a longitudinal framework have interactions together.
Notably, only the keywords that occurred a minimum of two times are included in the
analysis. In each sub-period, the top 200 keywords were selected with the highest degree, and
a Sankey diagram was built, as illustrated in Figure 6. The theme was titled by the keywords
with the utmost degree. In comparison with the number of publications for the corresponding
theme, the rectangle size is proportional, and edge width is proportional to the coverage index
between two interlinked themes. As it is shown in Figure 5, most themes are demonstrated in
all the two sub-periods and are developed in a constant and conjunct manner since the
primary sub-period (1961–2000) until the latter studied sub-period (2001–2019). Thus, the
mentioned findings suggest that these themes represent the topics that have been
continuously interesting in the technological innovation area. For instance, topics of
“GROWTH,” “IMPACT,” “INDUSTRY” and “PERFORMANCE.”

1961–1999 2000–2019
Name TS TC TC/TS Name TS TC TC/TS

Firm’s 5 547 109.4 Management 69 1,022 14.8

Determinants 4 182 45.5 Model 57 1,254 22.0
Performance 4 136 34.0 Impact 53 1,979 37.3
Environments 3 107 35.7 Determinants 46 2,105 45.8
Models 2 61 30.5 Adoption 40 1,192 29.8
Decision 2 63 31.5 R&D 105 1,775 16.9
R&D 2 15 7.5 Knowledge 64 833 13.0 Table 3.
Management 3 97 32.3 Firms 52 928 17.8 Themes in
Strategy 3 290 96.7 Growth 43 694 16.1 technological
Adoption 3 231 77.0 Information 26 386 14.8 innovation 1961–2019
EJIM Furthermore, a great cohesion was found among the themes in the technological
innovation scope. A number of the recognized themes are a continuation of themes that are
identified in a previous sub-period. One exception is the case of the theme “IMPACT.”

4. Discussion and conclusion

The purpose of the literature review in the field of technological innovation is to present
existing research and knowledge status, summarize existing research and analyze the
content of articles on this topic to readers and enthusiasts. In this regard, this study reviewed
the literature in the field of technological innovation and briefly discussed the content of
articles in this area. The increasing number of publications in this field indicates that the
research in this field will be more mature and knowledgeable in the coming years and will
provide useful results on technological innovation.
The current research was aimed to investigate “technological innovation” trends from
1961–2019. This study includes 1,361 technological innovation papers published in 500
journals. The first record about technological innovation was found in 1961, and since then,
the number of publications in this field have been steadily increasing, reaching 1,361
documents published in 2019.
Some interesting results were obtained by analyzing the co-citation network of cited
references and network of cited keyword co-occurrence and the thematic evolution during the
periods 1961–1999 and 2000–2019. The results of the citation network analysis show two
clusters within which the related articles are grouped. The first cluster contained articles with
sources of innovation. Various scholars have cited various sources for the adoption of
innovations. Briefly, it offers internal resources (knowledge-based and R&D), external
resources (use of external suppliers) and the use of internal and external resources to drive
innovation (Pavitt, 1984). On the other hand, other scholars (Cohen and Levinthal, 1989, 1990;
Teece, 1986; Teece et al., 1997; Zahra and George, 2002) all agreed on absorption capacity,
dynamic capabilities and complementary assets as sources of innovation. Absorption
capacity refers to a firm’s capability to identify the value of new and exterior information and
applying it to decisions. Also, a complementary organizational capability is essential to drive
innovation in organizations. Other scholars (Barney, 1991; Nelson and Winter, 1982)
emphasize the importance of RBV and believe that because resources within organizations
differ from one another, they possess the potential of innovation and competitive advantage.
In this regard, Porter offers two sources of cost and differentiation as competitive advantages
(Porter, 1985). Christensen suggests two types of innovation to prevent firms from failing in a
competitive environment, including sustaining and disruptive (Christensen, 1997).
Schumpeter has also introduced the concept of creative destruction that appears in new

Figure 6.
Changes in keywords
in technological
innovation 1961–2019
entrepreneurs by bringing malicious innovations to existing markets, thereby reducing the Technological
monopoly profits of existing companies and ultimately defeating them in a competitive innovation
environment (Schumpeter, 1942).
The second cluster includes publications on a variety of ISs (Lundvall, 1985) such as TIS
research
(Binz et al., 2014; Carlsson and Stankiewicz, 1991; Freeman, 1995; Markard and Truffer, 2008),
national (Christopher Freeman, 1987; Lundvall, 1992; Nelson, 1993) and sectoral ISs (Malerba,
2002). Most publications are about TIS, which has many definitions by various researchers.
TIS, in general, is defined as a dynamic grid of factors that interact in economic/industrial
sections under a specific organizational substructure and are involved in the production,
distribution and application of technology (Carlsson and Stankiewicz, 1991). The functions of
this system include entrepreneurial activities, knowledge development, conducting research,
knowledge dissemination with networks, market shaping, resource mobilization, legitimacy
and preventing change resistance (Hekkert et al., 2007).
By analyzing the co-occurrence keywords, we found a network of keywords consisting of
six clusters. The clusters show that the research in the field of technological innovation is
mainly focused on the sources of innovation, environmental innovation, technological
innovation, investment, economic growth of countries, technological ISs for sustainable
development, R&D and competitiveness. Through co-citation and co-occurrence keyword
analysis, key concepts about technological innovation were extracted (Figure 7).
Moreover, we analyzed the strategic keyword diagram that illustrates the evolution of the
literature on technological innovation between 1961–1999 and 2000–2019. The findings
indicate that some of the keywords are in the basic and transversal themes. Nevertheless,
some of the high numbers of citations are in the motor themes. The results also show that
some of the words that appeared in the literature in this field from 1961–1999 disappeared
during the years 2000–2019, suggesting the evolution of literature in this field. Also, many
other words have recently appeared in the 2000–2019 period, and some have remained
unchanged during those two intervals. As can be seen in Table 3, in the years 1961–1999,
most studies have been on the technological innovations of firms and then on the
determinants and performance of these innovations. But in recent years, the trend of studies
in the field of technological innovation is such that the focus of most studies is on R&D. In
other words, to carry out technological innovations, more attention has been paid to R&D
units as well as R&D companies. However, in previous years (1991–1991), the level of
attention to R&D has been very low. Also, in recent studies, topics such as management of
technological innovations, models of technological innovations and the impacts of these
innovations have received more attention from researchers.
Through the analysis of the themes, we proceeded to the study trends of this field, which
are summarized in the following figure:

5. Implication for researchers

The process of technological innovation is generally in two categories of production and
adoption of innovation. Innovation generation involves the creation of ideas and problem-
solving for product or process solutions. Adopting an innovation also involves acquiring or
implementing an innovation. Adoption leads to the implementation of a product, service,
technology or method that is new to the recipient organization. The technological innovation
process involves invention, innovation and diffusion (Diaconu, 2011). The main engine in
invention stage is R&D. As you can see in the analysis of the themes in Table 3, R&D has
always been the focus of technology innovation researchers before and especially after 2000.
In addition, by studying articles and through co-citation analysis and co-occurrence
keywords, we achieved the most topics studied by scholars in the field of technological
innovation, all of which are considered in the stage of innovation. Such as various sources of
 EJIM

Figure 7.

the studied articles

Theories and study
trends extracted from
Sources of innovation

Technological innovation systems for sustainable development

main concepts
extracted from Environmental innovation and technological innovation, investment and economic
co-citation and growth of countries
co-occurrence
keyword analysis
Competitiveness

Technological
Innovation Research and development
Research

Research and development

Technological innovation management

key trends
extracted feom
theme analysis
Models of technological innovation

Impacts of technological innovation

innovation include absorption capacity, dynamic capabilities, resource-based theory, Technological
evolutionary economic theory and Schumpeter’s creative destruction. Also, different ISs innovation
were extracted from the study of documents.
Another step in the innovation process is diffusion. Diffusion actually describes the rate at
research
which consumers adopt technological innovation (Rogers, 1995). Rogers’s innovation
diffusion model was developed in 1995. In this theory, the acceptance of innovation means the
decision of the individual to use technology. In the diffusion phase, the components that can
be important include the adoption and application of innovation (Amabile, 1988; Pichlak,
2015; Rogers, 2004). According to the analysis of documents, and reviewing the study process
according to Table 3, it can be found that although the adoption of innovation has the most
citations, the number of published documents is the lowest. It is, therefore, advisable to
conduct future studies on technology adoption, as companies spend a lot of money on
technological innovations (Figure 8). This increase in costs will lead to an increase in the cost
of goods and services. Therefore, future studies should examine whether applicants and
consumers pay for innovation.

6. Implications for practitioners

Achieving and enhancing technological innovation is an issue that all companies realize,
regardless of the size and scope of their operations. It is especially important in knowledge-
based companies whose primary purpose is to commercialize scientific achievements. In
such companies, the key to success in commercializing achievements and continuing to live

Figure 8.
Study gap and future
research
EJIM in a market that is continuously undergoing technological change is to have innovations
that somehow differentiate between a company’s products and the products of other
companies active in the market. Moreover, most organizations and, consequently, corporate
executives have different goals, including competition, high profitability and long-term
sustainability. Technological innovation also leads to long-lasting corporate life and,
ultimately, high profits by acquiring and promoting competitive advantage for companies
(Zhang et al., 2019).
As stated, the purpose of technological innovation is to gain a competitive advantage and
a better position in the market than competitors, which will ultimately lead to greater profits
by the company. Because technological innovations seek new technical knowledge and
trends, companies can meet innovative needs by producing innovative products for
customers (who have not yet used the same product). It also helps increase corporate market
share and maintain long-term competitive advantage (Han and Gao, 2019). Corporate R&D
units are the main center for technological innovation, and therefore, R&D managers need
significant funding to achieve technological advances. Thus, governments can develop
policies that encourage companies to invest in R&D. Eventually, it will lead to innovation and
technology development, which in turn will increase the competitive advantage of companies.
Morris argues that technology innovation managers, in addition to focusing on products and
services, need to focus on important relationships and interactions between the organization
and customers. Therefore, branding and market development play an important role in the
innovation process (Morris, 2011). The economic return also includes the output, sales or
process that creates the economic value of organizations. In fact, the financial return of the
entire innovation process is achieved through the successful sale of new products and
services.
Also, the results of the present study introduce resources to research and development
managers. They can use these resources to create technological innovations. Therefore, the
organization will gain a competitive advantage. These resources include absorption capacity
and dynamic capabilities. The concept of dynamic capabilities as a source of competitive
advantage was also discussed (Cepeda and Vera, 2007; Teece, 2007; Zhou and Li, 2010). The
dynamic capabilities perspective seeks to explain the success of some companies in achieving
a competitive advantage in a changing environment. Dynamic capabilities can change the
foundation of an organization’s resources based on the circumstances. In other words, the
capabilities of an organization that purposefully create, develop and change the usual
knowledge resources, capabilities or practices of an organization to improve organizational
effectiveness called dynamic capabilities (Salunke et al., 2011). This scientific perspective on
dynamic capabilities explains how organizations acquire them from internal and external
resources. The purpose of this organizational learning is to improve performance through
knowledge and understanding, which enables organizations to build and enhance their
knowledge assets.
To increase the company’s performance and gain a competitive advantage, managers
must use resources with the following characteristics: valuable, rare, irreplaceable and
heterogeneous with low imitation ability (Barney, 1991). In the process of researching
and developing technological innovation, companies must create heterogeneous, tacit and
sometimes ambiguous knowledge that makes duplication and reverse engineering
impossible for competitors (Han and Gao, 2019). As a result, companies can outperform
their competitors.
In addition to the above, appropriate systems have been developed to implement
technological innovations, including intellectual property rights, patents, technology support
and the core capabilities of a company during the process of researching and developing
technological innovations, all of which have the ability to compete with companies. This
reduces and leads to a stable and significant competitive position for the firm.
 Also, company managers can innovate by participating in innovation networks and Technological
creating ISs, and even through environmental opportunities, achieve a competitive innovation
advantage and a better competitive position in the market.
research
7. Limitations
This research has some limitations. One of the limitations is the number of samples studied,
which is limited to 1,361 documents in the WoS database. Future studies could review other
pieces of works in this area, including books, notes, book chapters, conference proceedings,
etc., in other databases. Furthermore, the articles reviewed in this study are only in the English
language. Future studies may review new topics in the field of technological innovation,
including research in other languages. The method of bibliographic inquiry somehow reduces
the bias that is often found in specialized and traditional surveys (Kovacs et al., 2015).
However, it has limitations and can be a complementary method for content analysis and
extensive reading (Schraven et al., 2015). In this study, a quantitative approach has been opted
by specifying the number of articles, while there are some qualitative limitations in converting
these results. Although the criteria it employs (e.g. citations) have been widely endorsed in
bibliographic studies, their ability to reflect quality could be questioned.

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About the authors

Morteza Akbari is an Associate professor at the Faculty of Entrepreneurship, University of Tehran. He
has published several papers on different aspects of entrepreneurship and technological
entrepreneurship and innovation. His research interests are entrepreneurial leadership and behavior,
open innovation, technological entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility and business ethic. His
work has been published in various journals, including Journal of Cleaner Production (Q1), Journal of
Nursing Scholarship (Q1), Journal of Agricultural Science and Technology (Q2), International Journal
Business Innovation and Research (Q2), Social Responsibility Journal (Q2), European Journal of Innovation
Management (Q2), The Bottom Line and Iranian Journal of Management Studies.
Maryam Khodayari is a Master of Science in Technology Management, Faculty of Management and
Accounting, Shahid Beheshti University. Her research interests are technology transfer, technology
intelligence, technological innovation and sustainability.
Armin Khaleghi is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Entrepreneurship, University of Tehran. His
research interests are innovation and business accelerator.
Mozhgan Danesh is a PhD Candidate of Entrepreneurship at University of Tehran. Her main
research interests are in the entrepreneurship, corporate entrepreneurship and technological
entrepreneurship. She has already written a book on business models. She has published numerous
articles on the technology innovation, helix innovation model, corporate entrepreneurship and
international corporate entrepreneurship.
Hamid Padash is a PhD in Economics and a Faculty Member in University of Tehran, Faculty of
Entrepreneurship. He has published many papers and books in economics, especially in development
and entrepreneurship areas. Moreover, he has some insightful papers with philosophical and
institutional approach to economic issues. Hamid Padash is the corresponding author and can be
contacted at: padash@ut.ac.ir

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