Bibliometrics: The Case of Comparing an Ecosystem Using System and Network Approaches

In recent years, there has been a growing debate on the contributions to innovation contexts. This research aims to analyze the differences emerging from the conceptualization of contexts in the “innovation ecosystem” (IE) and its linkages to the innovation system (IS) and network concepts and depict the current research trends in innovation and their expected evolution.Our methodological choice is a bibliometric analysis as it allows us to review and focus on the theoretical proposals by the scholars in detail. The research process has been conducted through a co-word analysis on the authors’ keywords as this approach is considered to be the most suitable to compare the dynamics of different research trends on a specific topic. The analysis was performed in two steps: the first based on all the research papers collected and the second based on a sub-dataset extrapolated from the main datasets on IS and innovation network (IN) literatures.The results demonstrate that both IS and IN research streams are, in some ways, connected with the IE perspective. The definitions and concepts used in the IS and IN literatures have been identified as replicated in the ecosystem approach even if specific insights have been generated.