نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
نویسندگان
1 دانشجوی دکتری مدیریت سیاستگذاری بازرگانی، گروه مدیریت بازرگانی، دانشکده مدیریت و اقتصاد، دانشگاه گیلان، رشت، ایران.
2 استاد، گروه مدیریت بازرگانی، دانشکده مدیریت و اقتصاد، دانشگاه گیلان، رشت، ایران
چکیده
کلیدواژهها
عنوان مقاله [English]
نویسندگان [English]
This study maps the knowledge structure and conceptual clusters of strategy research in innovative firms using bibliometric co-word analysis. The field, an interdisciplinary and rapidly growing area within management and innovation, interweaves strategic, organizational, and technological concepts, yet a clear picture of its conceptual structure and knowledge flow has been missing. To fill this gap, the applied research adopts a scientometric approach, extracting primary data from the Scopus database (2000–first half 2025) because of its broad journal coverage, standardized bibliographic metadata, and robust citation retrieval tools. The search strategy centered on two axes, “innovation” and “strategy,” employing keywords such as innovation, open innovation, innovation capability, innovative firms, strategic innovation, innovation strategy, business strategy, technology strategy, and strategic capabilities across titles, abstracts, and keywords. ScienceDirect was used only supplementarily to verify full-text details and fill information gaps. After screening an initial set of 1,650 documents, duplicates, irrelevant records, incomplete entries, and out-of-scope sources were removed, yielding a final corpus of 1,255 articles. Co-word analysis, identification of conceptual links, and scientific mapping were performed with VOSviewer. Excel and Biblioshiny supported data management and cleaning, while Publons was consulted for author verification. Hierarchical clustering then elucidated the internal structure of the clusters and their conceptual sub-branches.
From 1,881 keywords, 31 high-frequency terms, 137 strong conceptual links, and six semantic clusters were identified. The most frequent keywords were innovation (71 occurrences), innovative strategy (29), explorative innovation (23), sustainable innovation (22), innovative firms (20), exploitative innovation (20), and innovation performance (20). The literature organizes around six clusters. (1) Innovation Strategies—focuses on strategic orientations and decisions that foster innovation, encompassing innovative strategy, business strategy, strategic capabilities, and technology strategy, underscoring that firm success depends on aligning strategic goals with innovation capacities. (2) Types of Innovation—covers diverse forms: product, process, disruptive, sustainable, green, digital, and environmental innovation, reflecting multiple paths to generate economic, social, and technological value. (3) Organizational Capabilities and Innovation Capacity—emphasizes internal competencies such as dynamic capabilities, absorptive capacity, ambidextrous agility, innovation performance, and strategic empowerment, confirming that continuous learning and environmental adaptation are pivotal. (4) Actors and the Innovation Ecosystem—addresses innovative firms, entrepreneurial orientation, emerging markets, open innovation, and the circular economy, showing innovation thrives through dynamic interactions among organizations, markets, and networks. (5) Resource and Knowledge Management—stresses knowledge management, the resource-based view, absorptive capacity, and R&D investment as foundations for innovation and sustainable competitive advantage. (6) Digital Transformation and Emerging Technologies—comprises digital transformation, digital innovation, machine learning, and technological transformation, demonstrating the expanding role of new technologies in reshaping strategies and business models.
In conclusion, the study reveals that strategy research in innovative firms possesses a coherent, dynamic, and interdisciplinary conceptual structure. Core concepts emerge at the intersection of innovation strategies, organizational capabilities, knowledge resources, ecosystem contexts, and emerging technologies. The identification of six semantic clusters signals a departure from linear, traditional views toward a networked, technology-enabled, and capability-driven approach. Explaining strategy in such firms cannot rely on a single theory but requires integrating perspectives such as the resource-based view, dynamic capabilities, organizational learning, open innovation, and innovation ecosystems. The growing salience of sustainable innovation, digital innovation, the circular economy, and technological transformation shows that recent research is converging on the nexus of competitive advantage, sustainability, and digital transformation. The resulting knowledge map offers a foundation for future studies, facilitates the identification of emerging trends, and supports the formulation of scientific and organizational strategies in the innovation field.
کلیدواژهها [English]
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