Innovation: Exploring the knowledge base

New types of knowledge, and new ways of organising the production of it, may emerge as knowledge producers respond to the challenges posed by a changing society. This study will focus on the core knowledge of one such emerging field, namely, innovation studies, i.e. the attempt to understand the social process which enables the continuation of qualitative improvements of products, technologies, and the organisation of economic activities. To explore the knowledge base of innovation, a new data base of references in scholarly surveys of various aspects of innovation, mostly published in “handbooks”, is developed. The paper describes the process that led to the construction of the data base and its exploitation in identifying the core literature on innovation. Furthermore, the characteristics of this literature, the central contributors and the use of the literature (as reflected by references to this core literature in scholarly journals) are analysed. Finally, cluster analysis is used to make inferences about how the field is structured and its links with different disciplinary and cross-disciplinary contexts.