Big names in innovation research: a bibliometric overview

Over the last few years an increasing number of scientific studies related to innovation research has been carried out. The present study analyses innovation research developed between 1989 and 2013. It uses the Web of Science database and provides several author-level bibliometric indicators including the total number of publications and citations, and the h-index. The results indicate that the most influential professors over the last 25 years, according to their highest h-index, are David Audretsch, Michael Hitt, Shaker Zahra, Rajshree Agarwal, Eric Von Hippel, David Teece, Will Mitchell and Robert Cooper. Among these authors, it is possible to demonstrate that they are not necessarily the most productive authors, with the highest number of publications; however, they are the most influential, with the highest number of citations. The incorporation of a larger number of journals to the Web of Science has granted different authors access to publish their work on innovation research.