Where business model innovation comes from and where it goes: A bibliometric review

Abstract

Business model innovation (BMI) has been evolving as a burgeoning topic in academia and business practice for over two decades. In recent years, knowledge production within the BMI field is accelerating at a tremendous rate, making it hard to keep up with the state of the art. Given its broad literature coverage and the systematic and reproducible process of applying statistical and quantitative techniques, the bibliometric review can complement existing structured literature reviews by providing a holistic view of BMI research, identifying new research gaps and deriving new perspectives to address emerging challenges. This study investigated 1032 BMI‐related publications from 2000 to 2021 with bibliometric techniques of citation, co‐citation, bibliographic coupling and the co‐occurrence of keywords analyses, aiming to develop a theoretical framework of BMI, understand the evolutionary nuances, capture emerging trends and set a future research agenda. Finally, this study advocates that future research could revisit the role of the BMI concept as a tool for achieving sustainable business development.