Unraveling future research: an analysis of emergent literature in open innovation

Breakthrough discoveries and productive collaborations are crucially important for successful open innovation, fuelling rapid generation of scientific knowledge, and making synthesis and analysis of this information difficult. Improved methods for identifying research gaps and emergent conceptual themes across open innovation research are necessary. The purposes of the study are (i) to present a novel methodological approach that utilizes centering resonance analysis (CRA) as its core text clustering engine to establish relationships and thematic patterns among diverse scientific literature pertaining to open innovation, (ii) to demonstrate this methodology in an open innovation context, (iii) to validate this approach, and (iv) to discuss the extensibility of the provided methodology to other contexts. Results show that thematic threads are consistent with recognized innovation research work, as well as highlight new threads that may be crucial in shaping future research perspectives. The authors believe that much can be gained from the proposed approach and from the use of computer-based tools to aid in the rapid development of the field of open innovation and its integration to wider-focused research on innovation.