Non-technological innovation research: evaluating the intellectual structure and prospects of an emerging field

This paper is aimed at enhancing our understanding of theoretical origins, intellectual structure and outlook of non-technological innovation research with the purpose of facilitating further development of an emerging research field. We perform a co-citation analysis of 482 articles addressing non technological innovation published since 1975 and examine more than 11,000 sources that they drew on to identify key areas of research within the literature. By using a co-citation tie between articles as the unit of analysis, we dynamically trace and visualize the evolution of the intellectual structure of the non technological innovation research. Based on our findings, we conclude that the prospects for further development of the (emerging) field lie in: (1) bridging the creativity and innovation literatures at the individual level and addressing employee-based non-technological innovations; (2) strengthening the microfoundations and a multi-level (bottom-up) approach; (3) identifying potential avenues for positioning non-technological innovation vis-a-vis the innovation management field and further building connections and; (4) consolidating the relationship between management innovation as the dominant stream of research and non-technological innovation as the umbrella concept. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.