The Effect of Innovation on Small and Medium Enterprises: A Bibliometric Analysis

Innovation plays great role in organizational competitiveness and sustainable business processes and it should be a key success policy for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) all over the world. To this effect, the purpose of this study is to present a comprehensive understanding of the scientific studies made on the field of innovation and its effect on small and medium enterprises performance. A bibliometric study was used to analyze articles published between 1976 and 2020 and create an illustrative map of innovation in small and medium enterprises; a sample of papers gathered through Web of Science Core Collection database. Accordingly, there were found 2219 documents which were published in 332 sources. VOS viewer was employed to portray network analysis of, authorship, keywords visualization, citations, and countries dealing with the subject. SCIMAT software was also used to do longitudinal thematic analysis. Even though many countries, universities, research institutes, funding agencies, and authors contributed for the growth of this field of study, almost all are from developed nations. This study is one amongst the very few studies made using bibliometric analysis in this field. Moreover, the thematic network diagram reveals two other new themes in the subject, which are taken as knowledge seed, and have high potential for a future study.