What Does Front-End Research Build on? A Cocitation Analysis of the Intellectual Background and Potential Future Research Avenues

The front end (FE) of innovation is critical for a firm's new product success. Since academic interest in this research field has increased significantly, we include 168 FE papers and their 9119 references to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the FE literature. We use cocitation analysis to reduce their risk of researchers' implicit bias. We show that 11 intellectual research bases characterize extant FE literature: new product development (NPD) capabilities, NPD process, knowledge creation and NPD, organizational NPD creativity, externally influenced NPD creativity, external NPD creativity, new process development, social NPD capital, new product success, NPD project performance, and competitive NPD advantages. The citation burst analysis shows that researchers have varying degrees of interests in these topics. A better understanding of FE research's intellectual background and the identification of hot, cold, and evergreen FE topics are valuable contributions. For instance, FE researchers discuss the nature and characteristics of FE activities by referring to NPD process and new-process literature. They call for further assessments of this issue in order to make both the process implementation and the operationalization more flexible.