Sustainable business model innovation literature: a bibliometrics analysis

• DOI: 10.1007/s11846-022-00548-2
• Publication Date: 2022-04-02T11:03:22Z
• Authors: Ling Pan; Zeshui Xu; Marinko Skare
• Keywords: Thematic Analysis

Sustainable business model innovation (SBMI) has received growing attention since it can provide sustainable competitive advantages for corporations under a dynamic external environment. This paper aims to understand the current situations and progress of SBMI research by conducting a bibliometric study of the existing literature. By collecting data from Web of Science and using bibliometric tools, the basic characteristics of SBMI research are first presented to show the productivity and citations of publications utilizing recognized bibliometric indicators. Then, the cooperation networks among countries/regions, institutions, and authors are drawn to determine their collaborative relationships. Furthermore, keyword analysis is presented to explore the evolution of the hotspots and themes of SBMI research through co-occurrence analysis, burst detection analysis, and thematic evolution analysis. Finally, we integrate the antecedents-decisions-outcomes framework for SBMI research. The findings in this study indicate that the development of SBMI research is positive and that greater collaboration among institutions and authors is required to explore the internal drivers and design SBMI as well as other topics to be developed.