The Genealogy of Knowledge Service Innovation Research: Progress and Frontier
The Genealogy of Knowledge Service Innovation Research: Progress and Frontier
Jing Shen, Wenjun Cai
In the era of knowledge economy, knowledge service has become an important factor driving economic development and social progress, and innovation is very important to give full play to and make use of the value of knowledge service. Drawing the genealogy of knowledge service innovation research can provide reference for the research direction, research issue and work practice of knowledge service innovation in Information Science.
—Drawing the genealogy of knowledge service innovation research can provide reference for the research direction, research issue and work practice of knowledge service innovation in Information Science—
Taking the relevant research literature of Web of Science, ProQuest English databases, CNKI (https://www.cnki.net/) and Wanfang (https://www.wanfangdata.com.cn/) Chinese databases in 1995-2021 as data source, our research summarized the research topics through content analysis method on the basis of VOSviewer’s keyword clustering results and divided the research stages using bibliometric method. Then we further explored the relationship among research topics and analyzed the research waves of knowledge service innovation through Multiple Correspondence Analysis. We finally predicted the frontiers and gaps of knowledge service innovation using the Theory Development, Context, Characteristics, and Methodology (TCCM) framework and drew the genealogy of knowledge service innovation research, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. The genealogy of knowledge service innovation research
The findings show that there are three waves in the field of knowledge service innovation research: the first wave carried out was the basic research on topics such as “knowledge management” “cooperative innovation” “innovative development” “user requirement” “innovation platform”; the second wave conducted was the extended research topics such as “innovation capability” “innovation type” “knowledge network” “intellectual capital” “innovation performance”; and the third wave discussed the frontier issues on topics such as “technology-driven innovation” “open innovation”, and has derived the frontier topics on themes such as “intelligent technology-driven innovation” “social innovation” “ecological innovation”. Moreover, there is a close connection between and a state of continuous cross and fusion of the research topics of the three waves. 
The future research of knowledge service innovation will continue to pay attention to the above 12 research topics, and more research topics will be formed by constantly crossing and merging, and new frontier research topics will be produced; the future theoretical research of knowledge service innovation will continue to deeply integrate new ideas, new technologies and new methods with traditional theories, and continuously introduce theories from other fields, so as to form a unique theoretical system of knowledge service innovation; the context of future research will continue to focus on KIBS, library and consulting industry, and expand to the publishing industry and think tank, and there will be research upsurge of knowledge service innovation in public health, health information, crisis management and other fields; the future research methods will change from qualitative methods such as case analysis and model method, or quantitative methods such as questionnaire survey, regression analysis and structural equation model, to mixed research methods combining qualitative and quantitative methods with the help of emerging technological tools such as big data and artificial intelligence, or combining multiple quantitative methods.
The genealogy of knowledge service innovation research not only provides an important reference for the future research direction and identifies blank areas in knowledge service innovation field, but also provides several future propositions for the research of knowledge service innovation in information science in China, including:
- Future research should follow the development characteristics of the 12 research topics, through cross-fusion research or by introducing new perspectives, theories and methods, continuously deepening the new research areas—like exploring the relationship between open innovation and knowledge management in knowledge-intensive service organizations;
- Future research should introduce data-driven or intelligence-driven ideas for theoretical innovation, promoting the deep integration of new technologies, new methods and traditional theories, and drawing on advanced theories in other fields to form a unique theoretical system of knowledge service innovation;
- Future research should take advantages of technologies and methods in Information Science to provide organization, analysis and application tools for knowledge service innovation practice, so as to improve the level and quality of knowledge service innovation.
- Future research should expand application contexts based on users’ requirement, paying attention to the innovative practices of knowledge-intensive service organizations such as think tanks, publishing industry, public health, crisis management, etc., in order to enrich and improve the theoretical system and practical activities of knowledge service innovation.
Cite this article in APA as: Shen, J. & Cai, W. (2022, October 25). The genealogy of knowledge service innovation research: Progress and frontier. Information Matters, Vol. 2, Issue 10. https://informationmatters.org/2022/10/the-genealogy-of-knowledge-service-innovation-research-progress-and-frontier/
