The Evolution of the Triple Helix Thematic: a Social Networks Analysis

This study presents the evolution of the Triple Helix thematic using social network analysis. Our research covered 1,122 publications from the Web of Science database between 1995 and 2022. To analyze the data, we adopted the CiteSpace software, from which we interpreted the general properties of the co-citation network and the countries’ network. We also explored a set of nodes’ centralities to identify relevant publications and countries. The results showed two trends related to the literature relevance across different innovation systems. The first one is a possible theoretical replacement by authors who publish mainly about relationships between entities in economically developed countries that are leaders in innovation, whose research migrated from the Triple Helix model to the Quadruple Helix model. The second trend relates to the studies’ continuity based on the prior model by authors investigating innovation systems in less advanced technological ecosystems with newborn or young relationships.