Emergence and Dissemination of Ecosystem Concept in Innovation Studies: A Systematic Literature Review Study

Abstract

The abundant academic literature on ecosystem approach has attracted the attention of many researchers in various fields (such as business and management, innovation and entrepreneurship). The debate is questioning whether ecosystem as a concept is going towards a matured path. This article, contributes to this debate by applying bibliometric analysis approach on two similar comparable concepts of “system” and “ecosystem” within the boundaries of Business and Management (B&M) discipline. The co-citation analysis shows that the “system” concept is structured on a stable body of references and disseminated into various fields and subdomains. While the “ecosystem” concept is at early development phase, and it is expected to be identified as a distinguished field which provides explicit added value to innovation related research community. This paper provides the network structure of the collaborating authors, compares the disseminating pattern of the concepts and performs an advance topical analysis of respected literatures.