Coopetition research: towards a better understanding of past trends and future directions

Over the past two decades, coopetition received growing attention by practitioners and scholars worldwide with a wide range of subjects explored within the current body of literature. Despite the constantly growing number of scientific publications, the current literature lacks a comprehensive and critical overview of past and present research accomplishments. Based on the first citation analysis in this field, we present three topical clusters which help us to indicate the evolution path of coopetition research. Additionally, the current literature state is studied by means of a systematic literature review reflecting the major research avenues. By combining and comparing the results of these two analyses, the paper concludes by proposing possible future research directions. To advance our current understanding of coopetition, we suggest that forthcoming research explores coopetition in the contexts of startups and family firms and extends our knowledge on the protection mechanisms which are necessary for coopeting successfully.