Disentangling the intellectual structure of innovation and M&A literature

In an ever more globalized and dynamic economy, a firm’s capability of generating innovations is crucial for keeping up with the pace of technology and even for surviving in competitive markets. The increasing demand for new technical knowledge, expertise, and capabilities may lead firms to choose fast external technology sourcing such as mergers and acquisitions (M&A) instead of developing uncertain time-consuming in-house innovations. Based on co-citation analysis, this chapter aims to provide an objective overview of the intellectual structure of the extant innovation studies that examined the multifaceted phenomenon of M&A. More specifically, focusing on 93 highly co-cited academic articles published in top journals between 1990 and 2015, we attempt to identify the most active areas and focal streams and to suggest potential future trends. Five main themes—M&A innovation performance, technology-driven M&A, M&A organizational adaption, M&A integration process, multinational M&A—and several subfields are analyzed and discussed more in depth.