A preliminary bibliographic analysis of the social innovation literature

Despite the socio-economic importance of social innovation as a sustainable mechanism of addressing social challenges, the field lacks theory and suffers from conceptual ambiguity. Employing a bibliometric analysis, this study examined the patterns of social innovation research of 949 publications indexed in Scopus from 1966-2015. Results identified that the social innovation domain is in development, demonstrating percentage exponential growth in the volume of publications occurring in 1966-2004 (10%), 2005-2010 (22%) and 2011-2015 (68%). Nearly 55% of the research was conducted by European scholars. The field is multidisciplinary, with key knowledge clusters residing in urban studies, ecological resilience, transition management, and user innovation. The discipline is supported by a large number of journals from various disciplines due to the absence of dedicated social innovation journals. Policy implications are offered for new and existing scholars on patterns of social innovation and the direction for future research; and publishers on potential publishing avenues.