Friends with Benefits or Enemies – Eco-Innovation and Emerging Technology

Abstract

Eco-innovation is usually seen as the antipode of technology. The purpose of this research is to explore what the current research streams are and how they are changing over time, aligning and juxtaposing eco-innovation and emerging technologies and addressing this common misunderstanding. The importance of obtaining this high-level overview of the research done comes from the explosion of both research areas in the last 10 years, which highlights their dynamic development and vibrant evolution. To achieve this goal, we perform a bibliometric analysis, basing it on 399 publications indexed in Web of Science. The research questions to be answered are 1.) What is the general scope of research focusing on eco-innovation and emerging technologies simultaneously?; and 2.) What are the tangential themes surrounding eco-innovation and emerging technologies? From these broad research questions, several sub-questions outline the scope of the research and provide a deeper understanding of who the most relevant authors are, which journals publish such research, what the trends in the research topics are so far, and how the research is progressing in terms of growth and direction. The results addressing the second research question reveal some hidden dependencies of the current state of the research relationship and provide insight into some possible directions for future research. The results are relevant and insightful for researchers and practitioners in the fields of eco-technological innovation, sustainability and the environment, and ecological studies. The study concludes by formulating current themes and knowledge gaps for further research, as well as indicating under-researched areas of emerging sub-streams involving ecology, innovation, and technology. Another contribution is the suggestion of formulating a new research stream in the innovation management scientific field: eco-tech innovation..