A Bibliometric Review of the Innovation Intermediary: Mapping Roles and Setting a Research Agenda

Abstract

The development of innovation management practices toward openness and emerging socio-economic models have changed the roles and supporting activities of innovation intermediaries. This paper aims to review the extant research to explore the role of innovation intermediaries, map the current knowledge and outline a future research agenda. Utilizing the novel quantitative literature review approach of bibliographic coupling, examining 164 journal articles, the paper presents a robust analysis of the intellectual streams and key concepts underpinning innovation intermediaries. This is the first time that a quantitative review method has been used to analyses this research area and it provides an opportunity for new insights to complement previous qualitative reviews. This paper makes a contribution to the on-going debate by proposing a framework that explains the role of innovation intermediaries: knowledge broker, knowledge transfer enabler, orchestrator, and open innovation facilitator, and the functions embedded with the roles at different levels of unit analysis, i.e., firm, industry, and national. The paper concludes by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of the framework and details key areas for future research.