Entrepreneurial approach and open innovation. A bibliometric and literature review

Since the first definition of Open Innovation the indivisible relationship between open innovation and entrepreneurship has drawn a lot of research attention, however, the exact mechanisms by which openness benefits entrepreneurs and vice versa are not yet fully understood. Based on this consideration, this study aims to offer an overview of the evolution of the literature regarding the OI-entrepreneurship relationship published over the last decades. We use a bibliometric analysis coupled with a systematic literature review were performed over a data set of 106 peer-reviewed articles published from 2005 to 2020. The authors discovered the existence of five well-polarized clusters with the following thematic focusses: entrepreneurial opportunity for OI, strategic partnership opportunity for OI, organizational opportunity for OI, digital opportunity for OI, and institutional opportunity for OI. The authors investigated each thematic cluster by reviewing the most impactful contributions within them to create a framework which my highlights future avenues for the whole topic.