A Bibliometric Review and Visualization Analysis in Product

Development Project Management: 2012-2021

Pingye Tian

, Qing Yang

and Yingxin Bi

School of Economics and Management, University of Science & Technology Beijing, China

Keywords: Product Development Project, CiteSpace, Research Hotspots, Visual Analysis.

Abstract: CiteSpace is used to do the visualization analysis to all the product development project literature collected

in SCI-E and SSCI, with which time and space distribution, collaborative network of authors, collaborative

network of institutions, co-cited journal, co-occurrence keyword knowledge maps are made to reveal the space

distribution, hot topics and development trends in the field of product development project. The study results

show that: American, Germany and British scholars have led this field, some Chinese scholars also produce

lots of results. Hot topics includes the performance and success factors of product development, innovation

management, system modelling and knowledge management of development organization. The result can

promote theoretical development of the product development, which will help scholars to determine trends

and direction. This paper also provides guidance and reference for firms to achieve good practice in product

development.

1 INTRODUCTION

Consumer demand is increasingly fragmented,

personalized and experiential. How to efficiently and

innovatively develop products to accurately meet

customer requirements has become the primary

problem to be solved (Kavadias and Ulrich, 2020).

Experts and scholars pay more attention to it. A series

of research results have been produced in product

development (PD) project. Considering the richness

and diversity of PD project management literature, it

is urgent to conduct a state-of-the-art review to

comprehensively and systematically describe the

landscape and evolution of PD project research.

At present, some scholars have analysed and

summarized the hot spots and frontiers of PD project.

For example, Carneiro systematically summarized

the development of PD project management

(Carneiro et al., 2021). Marzi et al. (2021) analysed

1315 new product development (NPD) literature from

2008 to 2018. He summarized the current research

focus, and looked into the future exploratory agenda.

But these studies lack visual analysis process and

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7592-4609

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7529-9065

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1753-9507

Corresponding Author: Qing Yang

ignore the in-depth excavation of important topics

and spatial and temporal distribution.

To address the gap identified above, we conduct a

bibliometric analysis to comprehensively review the

landscape and evolution of the field based on a

sample of 1,317 articles in SCI-E & SSCI from 2012

to June 2021. We use CiteSpace to conduct

collaborative network of authors, collaborative

network of institutions, co-cited journal and co-

occurrence keyword knowledge maps. Such visual

analysis allows us to find out the important topics and

trends in PD project management.

2 RESEARCH DESIGN

2.1 Data Source

As mentioned above, the Science Citation Index

Expanded (SCI-E) and Social Sciences Citation Index

(SSCI) of the Web of Science core set were selected

as data sources. Referring to the existing research

(Marzi et al., 2021), we conduct “TS = (Product

Tian, P., Yang, Q. and Bi, Y.

A Bibliometric Review and Visualization Analysis in Product Development Project Management: 2012-2021.

DOI: 10.5220/0010976800003117

In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems (ICORES 2022), pages 251-258

ISBN: 978-989-758-548-7; ISSN: 2184-4372

251

Development Project) OR TS = (PD Project)”. To

display and analyze the latest research results and

evolution trends of PD project, the retrieval time

interval is set as 2012 to June 2021, and “articles” and

“review” category are selected. We select three

research fields of “Business”, “Management” and

“Operations Research Management Science”.

Finally, 1328 literatures meeting the requirements

were retrieved. To ensure the scientific results, the

1328 articles were further manually screened.

Through the manual review, 11 articles irrelevant to

the topic of this study (e.g., construction projects)

were removed. The final sample size for bibliometric

analysis was 1317. The content exported from Web

of Science includes titles, authors, publications,

journals, abstracts, keywords, issue numbers, DOI

and all references.

2.2 Research Tool

With the development of information technology and

visualization technology, bibliometrics and scientific

knowledge mapping provide powerful methods and

tools for clarifying the context and trend of

literature. CiteSpace is a powerful literature

metrology visualization analysis software. It has been

favored by many scholars and widely used in many

fields (Zhang et al., 2021, Guo et al., 2021). In view

of this, to visualize the landscape and evolution of

product PD projects management, we conduct the

author co-occurrence networks, institution co-

occurrence networks, keywords and cited journal co-

occurrence networks knowledge maps using

CiteSpace. Figure 1 is the research design of this

article.

Figure 1: Article total research design.

The research design consists of three parts: 1)

analysis preparation, including literature retrieval and

literature screening, 2) analysis process, including

visual analysis using CiteSpace, 3) analysis results

refer to the time and space distribution and hot topics

of PD project literature summarized according to the

analysis process.

3 DISTRIBUTION OF PD

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

RESEARCH

3.1 Analysis of Publication Outputs

The number of annual publications can directly

reflect the development status of a research field in a

specific period. It is an important indicator to measure

the development trend (Guo et al., 2021). Based on

the statistics of literature on PD projects in SCI-E &

SSCI from 2012 to June 2021, the annual distribution

of the number of published papers is drawn as shown

in Figure 2, which help us form a preliminary

understanding of this field.

Figure 2: The annual distribution of product development

projects papers published by Web of Science in the past

decade.

As shown in Figure 2, international circulation of

articles on PD project management has remained

stable in the past decade. The annual average is 141.

The highest number of publications was 150 in 2014.

In conclusion, the circulation of articles in PD project

management has maintained a high level in the past

decade, which indicates this field continues to receive

the focus of scholars, and also reflects the

management and innovation of PD project is very

important.

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3.2 Analysis of Authors, Institutions

and Countries

3.2.1 Analysis of Authors’ Collaborative

Network

The author collaboration network analysis of a

research field helps to capture key scholars. As shown

in Figure 3, the authors’ collaboration network

diagram in the research field of product R&D projects

can be obtained by running the “Author” option of

CiteSpace.

Figure 3: A collaborative network of authors in the domain

of product development projects.

Table 1: Top 10 product development project scholars and

their institutions.

Rank Scholar Counts Institution

Tyson R

Browning

Texas Christian

University

Martin

Hoegl

Ludwig-Maximilian’s-

Universität München

Alexander

Kock

Technische Universität

Berlin

Miia

Martinsuo

Tampere University of

Technology

5 Qing Yang 8

University of Science &

Technology Beijing

Johan

Frishammar

Lulea University of

Technology

Tingting

Yan

8 Wayne State University

Lisa

Melander

7 Linkoping University

Fred

Langerak

Erasmus University

Rotterdam

Nicolette

Lakemond

7 Linkoping University

The tree-ring nodes represent the number of

articles published by scholars. The larger nodes

reflect the more articles published by scholars in

recent ten years. The lines between nodes indicate

that two scholars have cooperated. In this paper, the

“Node Labels” Threshold in CiteSpace is set as “6”.

As shown in Table 1, the number of papers and

institutions of the top ten authors are counted.

The top three authors of papers published in the

past ten years are Professor Tyson R Browning from

Texas Christian University, Professor Martin Hoegl

from the University of Munich, Germany, and

Professor Alexander Kock from the Technical

University of Berlin, Germany.

In addition, the cooperation network shows Yang

Qing and Yao Tao, Lin Jun and Qian Yanjun, Kock

Alexander and Carbonell Pilar, Mishra Anant and

Chandrasekaran Aravind and other authors have close

cooperation relationships. Several scholars are also

the core strengths of their research teams. They have

made important contributions to the development of

PD project management.

3.2.2 Analysis of Countries and Institutions

Analysing the countries and institutions is conducive

to identifying the main research positions and the

distribution of research forces. As shown in Figure 4

and Figure 5, we obtain the cooperation network of

institutions and the cooperation network of countries

in PD project management by running “Institutions”

and “Country” in CiteSpace.

Figure 4: Network of publishing institutions in the domain

of product development projects.

To display important institutions and countries,

the “Threshold” of institution was set as “13”,

“Threshold” of country was set as “49”. As shown in

Table 2 and 3, we make statistics of the number of

papers published by the top ten institutions and

countries.

A Bibliometric Review and Visualization Analysis in Product Development Project Management: 2012-2021

253

Figure 5: Network of publishing countries in the domain of

product development projects.

Table 2: Top 10 the important institutions and numbers of

their papers.

Rank Institution Counts

1 University of Cambridge 30

2 The Pennsylvania State University 24

3 Aalto Universit

4 University de São Paulo 20

5 National University of Singapore 19

Eindhoven University of

Technolog

7 Technical University of Denmark 18

8 Linko

Universit

9 Politecnico di Milano 17

10 Erasmus Universit

Rotterda

Table 3: Top 10 the important countries and numbers of

their papers.

Rank Country Publications

1 USA 391

2 ENGLAND 150

3 GERMANY 120

4 CHINA 113

5 NETHERLANDS 91

6 ITALY 82

7 SWEDEN 81

8 FRANCE 76

9 AUSTRALIA 63

10 DENMAR

From 2012 to 2021, the important research

institution of PD project management are University

of Cambridge and the University of Manchester in

UK, Pennsylvania State University and Texas

Christian University in USA, Technical University of

Munich in Germany, Xi’an Jiaotong University in

China, and Tilburg University in the

Netherlands. Among them, 29.7% were published in

the US, 11.4% in the UK, 9% in Germany, 8% in

China and 7% in the Netherlands. It can be seen the

main countries of PD project management research is

concentrated in European, American, China and

Singapore.

3.3 Analysis of Published Journals and

Co-Cited Journals

3.3.1 Analysis of Published Journals

The analysis of published journals helps to discover

the level and number of published journals in this

field. To master the distribution of journals that have

published research on PD project management in the

past ten years, this paper made statistics on the top 20

journals with publications, as shown in Table 4.

Table 4: Division and number of published papers of the top

20 journals.

Rank Journal Counts

Journal of Product Innovation

Mana

ement

117

International Journal of Project

Mana

ement

IEEE Transactions on Engineering

Management

4 Pro

ect Mana

ement Journal 43

5 R & D Mana

ement 41

6 Industrial Marketin

Mana

ement 37

Production and Operations

Mana

ement

Concurrent Engineering: Research

and Applications

Journal of Business & Industrial

Marketin

International Journal of Managing

Pro

ects in Business

International Journal of Production

Research

Technological Forecasting and

Social Change

13 Journal of Business Research 27

14 Production Planning & Control 23

International Journal of Production

Economics

16 Technovation 22

Journal of Engineering and

Technolo

Mana

ement

18 Research Polic

International Journal of Operations

& Production Mana

ement

20 Research-Technology Management 19

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Journal of Product Innovation Management

(JPIM) ranked first with 117 articles, accounting for

8% of the total sample. International Journal of

Project Management (IJPM) ranked second with 76

papers, accounting for 6% of the total. IEEE

Transactions on Engineering Management (IEEE-

TEM) ranked third with 51 articles, accounting for 4%

of the total.

3.3.2 Analysis of Co-Citation Journals

To determine the core journal, we also conduct a

journal co-citation network knowledge mapping

(Figure 6) by running Citespace's “Cited Journal”

option.

Figure 6: Network of cited journals in the domain of

product development projects.

As show in Table 5, we counted the top 20

journals, citation frequency and centrality.

JPIM is not only the most published Journal, but

also the most co-cited Journal, with 861 times. The

journal with the highest centrality is IEEE-TEM with

a score of 0.12. In addition, it also includes

Management Science (MS), Academy of Management

Review (AMR), Journal of Operations Management

(JOM), and Academy of Management Journal (AMJ).

These are the top publication in the field of

management and operations research, and its

published results provide the knowledge foundation

of project management, organizational research,

strategic management and operations research for

product development.

Table 5: Division and citation volume of top 20 cited

journals.

Rank Journal

Centr

alit

Count

Journal of Product

Innovation Management

0.03 861

2 Management Science 0.07 806

Academy of Management

Review

0.04 749

4 Organization Science 0.05 715

Strategic Management

Journal

0.07 686

Academy of Management

Journal

0.10 685

7 Research Polic

0.05 633

Administrative Science

Quarterl

0.03 628

9 Harvard Business Review 0.00 563

10 R & D Mana

ement 0.02 534

IEEE Transactions on

ineerin

Mana

ement

0.12 523

12 Journal of Marketin

0.02 485

Journal of Operations

Mana

ement

0.02 449

Industrial Marketing

Management

0.04 443

Journal of Marketing

Research

0.05 443

16 Journal of Management 0.00 439

17 Technovation 0.02 438

Journal of Business

Research

0.05 420

International Journal of

Pro

ect Mana

ement

0.05 358

California Management

Review

0.06 355

4 HOT RESEARCH TOPICS AND

FUTURE RESEARCH

DIRECTIONS

4.1 Hot Research Topics

To comprehensively display hot topics in PD

project management, this paper makes a visual

analysis of 1317 articles based on CiteSpace,

referring to the research of literature (Budle et al.,

2021, Khanra et al., 2018). The “Keywords” function

of CiteSpace can identify and analyze the contents of

“DE” (Keywords) and “ID” (Keywords Plus) in the

imported documents, which is conducive to

displaying the high frequency and high center

keywords, thus reflecting the focus of research. The

co-occurrence map of keywords of PD project from

A Bibliometric Review and Visualization Analysis in Product Development Project Management: 2012-2021

255

2012 to June 2021 constructed in Figure 7, with a total

of 469 nodes and 1339 links. Set “Threshold” to 13,

and 104 labels are displayed.

Figure 7: Keywords co-occurrence mapping of product

development projects.

As show in Table 6, we counted the top 10

keywords and counts.

Table 6: Important keywords.

Rank Keyword Counts

roduct development 420

erformance 368

3 innovation 296

4 mana

ement 238

5 research and development 202

6 model 180

7 knowled

e 173

8 im

act 153

9 desi

n 128

10 success 117

According to important keywords, we find four

hot topics: system modelling, knowledge

management, innovation management, performance

& success.

(1) System Modelling. System modelling for

PD project management includes the following four

aspects: process architecture, organization

architecture, product architecture and cross-domain

integration (Yang et al., 2018). Design structure

matrix (DSM), social network analysis (SNA),

PageRank are the important structuring tool (Yang et

al., 2018, Yang et al., 2018).

(2) Knowledge Management. Knowledge

transfer, knowledge share, knowledge creation,

knowledge integration, absorptive capacity and

dynamic capability are the core keywords in PD

project knowledge management. In recent years,

many scholars pay attention to this domain (Li et al.,

2018).

(3) Innovation Management. Open

innovation, technological innovation, radical

innovation, product innovation, empirical analysis

and competitive advantage are the important

keywords in PD project innovation management

(Zheng et al., 2015). Empirical research is the main

research method in this field.

(4) Performance & Success. PD project

performance is measured in the following ways: cost,

time to market, quality, advances in technology and

customer acceptance (Kleinschmidt and Cooper,

1991). PD project success factors include strategic

elements, organizational elements, development

process elements and market environment elements

(Cooper, 2018).

4.2 Future Research Directions

We used Citespace to make burst word co-

occurrence, which could better grasp the key and

cutting-edge content. Burst word in PD project

management capture shows 15 keywords, and the

results are shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8: Keywords with the strongest citation bursts of

product development project.

Among them, competitive advantage burst

intensity is the highest (Strength =9.75), indicating

that the occurrence frequency of this word is very

high in a short time. The time zone of exploration,

exploitation and integration is from 2013 to

2015. The time zone of trust is 2015 to 2017. The

time zone of information technology and market

orientation is 2015-2016. The time zone of industry

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and dynamic capability is 2016-2018. The time zone

of competitive advantage, knowledge management,

development project is 2017~2018. The time zone of

radical innovation is 2018-2019. Coordination,

supplier involvement and absorptive capacity are the

breakout words of 2019~2021.

Based on the above results, we point out several

issues worthy of research in PD project management

in the future: (1) How to improve the knowledge

absorption capacity of PD project team. (2) How to

use big data technology to improve the efficiency of

supplier and customer involvement in the PD project

process. (3) How to launch radical innovation to

improve the competitiveness of enterprises in the

market.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This paper provided a visual and systematic review of

the important topics on PD project management. This

bibliometric research analyzed 1317 valid papers on

PD project management in SCI-E & SSCI from 2012

to June 2021. The number of publications in PD

project management keeps a steady trend.

According to the country and institution

cooperation analysis, University of Cambridge, The

Pennsylvania State University and Aalto University

are the important research institution. USA, UK,

China, Singapore, Germany are the core countries.

According to the author cooperation analysis, Tyson

R Browning from Texas Christian University, Martin

Hoegl from the University of Munich, and Alexander

Kock from the Technical University of Berlin are the

important scholars. According to the co-citation

journals network and published journals, Journal of

Product Innovation Management, International

Journal of Project Management, IEEE Transactions

on Engineering Management are an influential and

productive journal considering its number of articles

and citations.

According to the co-occurrence keywords

network, system modeling, knowledge management,

innovation management, performance & success are

the hot topics in PD project management in past

decade. In the future, radical innovation, supplier

involvement, absorptive capacity and competitive

advantage are worth research agendas to be explored.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was supported by the National Natural

Science Foundation of China under Grant No.

71872011 and No.71929101, and Fundamental

Research Funds for the Central Universities (FRF-

BR-18-001B).

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