Disambiguating the definitions of the concept ‘transformative innovation’

The definition of ‘transformative innovation’ is still ambiguous, making it difficult to develop more targeted strategies for steering scientific and technological innovation. In this study, taking extant academic publications as our research object, we used topic extraction and visualisation tools to explore the intersections and differences among transformative and other innovative concepts. The correlation degrees among the concepts related to ‘transformative innovation’ were used to distinguish the relationships among concepts related to ‘breakthrough innovation’ and ‘disruptive innovation’. We further analysed the definitional differences among ‘transformative innovation’, ‘emerging technology’ and ‘groundbreaking research’. The results showed that the concepts of ‘breakthrough innovation’ and ‘disruptive innovation’ can be integrated into the scope of ‘transformative innovation’. However, the definitions of ‘transformative innovation’, ‘emerging technology’ and ‘research frontier’ had their distinct characteristics. ‘Transformative innovation’ focused on major impactful technological changes. ‘Emerging technology’ focused on novel technology and its promoting. ‘Research frontier’ focused on research activities taking place at the frontiers of knowledge. Therefore, distinctive science and technology (S&T) policies are needed for the different types of innovation. This article introduces a novel multidimensional method to place the different concepts associated with ‘transformative innovation’ into a unified framework. This framework is expected to support policymakers in their S&T policymaking, and it would aid the work of S&T researchers.