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Bridging foundations and frontiers in responsible innovation: a quantitative map of knowledge bases and emerging themes
Date
2026-07-27
Abstract
As Responsible Innovation (RI) principles are applied to frontier areas such as emerging technologies, a key question is whether this expansion reflects deep integration of RI’s core commitments or surface-level adoption. To address this, this study combines a systematic literature review with bibliometric mapping. Co-citation analysis identifies the field’s four knowledge bases, and keyword co-occurrence delineates seven emerging themes, including artificial intelligence, digital health, and digital agriculture. We also introduce a foundations-to-frontiers alignment framework to analyze how emerging themes draw upon the field’s knowledge bases and visualize it in a heatmap. The analysis reveals four differentiated reliance pathways across RI themes, namely theoretical-institutional, governance-critique, corporate implementation, and integrative pathways, and identifies a cross-cutting principle-tomethod gap, with methodological foundations remaining comparatively weakly represented across most themes. The study delivers a quantitative structural map of the RI field and outlines a data-informed agenda to strengthen the alignment between RI principles and practice.
Supervisor
Description
Publisher
Routledge Taylor & Francis Group
Citation
Journal of Responsible Innovation 13 (1), 2688598
Files
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Xu_2026_Bridging.pdf
Adobe PDF, 1.63 MB
ULRR Identifiers
Funding code
Funding Information
Sustainable Development Goals
External Link
License
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International