A bibliometric review of emerging industries : theoretical frameworks and future research directions

Space economy, blockchain, and artificial intelligence are just three of many examples of industries that are often defined as emerging ones. However, from a theoretical point of view, a clarification on what is an emerging industry is needed. Being this a recent topic, it has experienced a fragmented academic contribution so far, which made it almost impossible to establish with accuracy the characteristics defining whether an industry is emerging or not. In 2016, the paper “Emergence of Industries: A review and future direction” of Gustafsson et al., has qualitatively reviewed the literature, trying to structure the knowledge on the theme and highlighting the key open points for future research directions. In this research, a new literature review on the topic will be done. However, contrary to Gustafsson et al., a quantitative-bibliometric approach based on the co-citation and the co-word techniques will be adopted, and the main theoretical roots for the topic, such as the themes that have been mostly linked with the concept of the emerging industry will be shown. In the end, based on obtained results, it will be presented a model of the phenomenon and further future directions of research.

La ricerca si propone di struttuarare le conoscenze accademiche relative al tema delle emerging industries accumulate fino ad oggi, attraverso un'analisi bibliometrica effettuata con le tecniche di co-citation e co-word. Infine, le direzioni di ricerca future saranno mostrate.