Title: Innovation and the international field: a bibliometric study

Authors: Alice Salami-Adesanya; Marisa Ramírez-Alesón

Addresses: Department of Management and Business Organization, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zaragoza, Gran Vía, 2 – 50006 Zaragoza, Spain ' Department of Management and Business Organization, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zaragoza, Gran Vía, 2 – 50006 Zaragoza, Spain

Abstract: This paper explores the academic research on innovation, its related concepts - R&D, technology - and its international scope, because in recent years it has been growing in importance in both business and academic spheres. This greater interest has resulted in a broad area of new knowledge but there is a lack of studies bringing the concepts together. The aim of this paper is to identify the main lines of research, their trends, topics and the research agenda on innovation and internationalisation. Through a bibliometric analysis of more than 10,000 articles published in the main journals in this field of study (Web of Science), a comprehensive overview and time evolution of the field of study is obtained. The bibliographic data has been processed using VOSviewer software and co-citation analyses, bibliographic coupling and co-occurrence of authors and keywords. The results show that the current topics are mainly based on the study of innovation, management, performance and technology. Future lines of research are identified from topics with lower co-occurrence, such as knowledge transfer, collaboration, governance, spillovers and open innovation, among others.

Keywords: innovation; internationalisation; R&D; technology; bibliometric analysis; VOSviewer.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIR.2025.146999

International Journal of Business Innovation and Research, 2025 Vol.37 No.2, pp.206 - 228

Received: 18 May 2022
Accepted: 25 Jun 2022
Published online: 10 Jul 2025 *

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