Innovation management in small and medium enterprises: A bibliometric analysis approach between 1985 and 2019

Abstract

Many changes have come over the business with the onset of globalization and the digitization of the economy, including the last two years. In addition, relevant changes have been caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating the relevance of innovation management (IM) within organizations as a process to face these new realities. This article aims to present the main contributions on innovation management in small and medium-sized enterprises (IM in SMEs). To determine the state-of-the-art innovation techniques, the study systematically reviews articles related to this subject using a bibliometric study approach between 1985 and 2019 using the Web of Science (WoS) database. The study analyzes and presents the most cited articles, the main authors, institutions, countries, and the most productive journals. Additionally, VOSviewer was used to provide a more in-depth analysis of the data obtained from the search. Among the main results, it is clear that the most productive universities and the most influential and productive authors are in the United States, leaving a relevant possibility of taking this analysis to different countries, mainly developing countries, to adjust adequate innovation processes according to the specific realities of each country.