Context matters: a global bibliometric review of regional innovation systems

Abstract

The concept of the regional innovation system (RIS) has received substantial attention from the scientific community, public administrations, and international organisations. This paper presents a systematic quantitative review of RIS research using bibliometric techniques and the Web of Science Core Collection database up to and including the year 2017. Four periods were examined to track the evolution of the RIS concept. The results show that RIS research has grown considerably since 2010, becoming a central research theme in countries focused on a systemic approach toward innovation and in decentralised countries, especially in Western Europe. ‘Innovation’, ‘Europe’, ‘technology’, ‘networks’, and ‘firms’ have been the core themes of RIS research since the concept arose in 1992. ‘Entrepreneurship’ was the major emerging research theme in the 2010s. Since 2010, other emerging topics have appeared, namely ‘collaboration’, ‘organisation’, ‘triple helix’, ‘China’, ‘perspective’, ‘knowledge bases’, and ‘governance’. ‘Smart specialisation’ and ‘creation’ have been major themes since 2015.