A look at the focus shift in innovation literature due to Covid-19 pandemic

This study explores the problems related to the development of innovation research in the field of business and economics and the change in their characteristics following the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We compile a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 17,277 pre-epidemic publications and 4,240 post-epidemic publications from the Web of Science. Using bibliometric methods and visualization tools, we present the changes in these publications following the COVID-19 pandemic, and identify the influential countries and regions, sources, and references, and obtain features of keywords over time. The results show that innovation research is rich in content, and involves a wide range; it has been focusing on emerging topics, such as those concerning low-carbon, innovation forms, and epidemic environments, following the COVID-19 pandemic. This study contributes to the body of knowledge on innovation, and helps to understand the features and structures of innovation research in business and economics.