Disrupting the Research Process through Artificial Intelligence: Towards a Research Agenda

This chapter explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will potentially disrupt how Innovation Management (IM) research will be conducted. In the recent decades, the research process has remained virtually unchanged, i.e., a structured, stepwise process. Recently, AI has shown new opportunities that affect this process. AI applications have been developed supporting researchers for specific tasks to ease their work, for example, database searching, transcribing and data management. For example, an autonomous literature review (i.e., database search, selection, analyzing, concluding, and writing) has been conducted by AI, vastly exceeding what human research could achieve in the same time frame, which paves the way for interesting reflections on how AI applications affect research from here on going forward. As we have explored AI techniques and AI applications and discussed their potential for conducting research, three themes emerged regarding how future research might be conducted: simplification thorough the use of computational power, augmentation of a researcher’s capabilities, and replacement by automation: Three critical questions are identified: (1) The future use of AI applications in research; (2) Exploring the trust in AI — The black box dilemma, and; (3) Benefits and limitations of AI applications. These topics are discussed, paving a way towards a research agenda.