The Relationship between Innovation and Sustainability: A Bibliometric Review of the Literature

Dorin Maier, Andreea Maier, Ioan Așchilean, Livia Anastasiu and Ovidiu Gavriș
Additional contact information
Dorin Maier: Department of Buildings and Management, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, 400020 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Andreea Maier: Department of Buildings and Management, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, 400020 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Ioan Așchilean: Department of Buildings and Management, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, 400020 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Livia Anastasiu: Department of Buildings and Management, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, 400020 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Ovidiu Gavriș: Department of Buildings and Management, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, 400020 Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 10, 1-20

Abstract: The research conducted in this paper is directed towards a bibliometric review and a visualization analysis of the relationship between innovation and sustainability. The main objective is to empirically document the intellectual structure, the volume and the knowledge-development directions. For this objective, we used the VOS Viewer software and the scientific databases ISI Web of Science (WoS). We identify that there is a big increase in volume of articles on innovation and sustainability published in the last 10 years, from 2010 up to 2019, compared to the entire period before 2010. Given the large amount of the literature, we form an ample database of 436 peer-reviewed articles published in the last 10 years. The bibliometric analysis reveals the most influential journals, authors and papers in the studied field. This research reveals that by combining the main aspects of innovation and sustainability in a single concept like “sustainable innovation”, an emerging topic can appear, and it can offer new research directions in the very big field of innovation and in the new and actual field of sustainability.

Keywords: innovation; sustainability; sustainable innovation; business innovation; sustainable development; sustainability-oriented innovation; eco innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/10/4083/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/10/4083/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:10:p:4083-:d:359007

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().