The field of external knowledge search for innovation has a long tradition and has inspired several schools of thought resulting in a rich and burgeoning body of research. However, the field suffers from two key limitations. First, the pluralism of research across multiple disciplines impedes our attention to the field as a whole, including its intellectual structure and core ideas. Second, recent developments in the business environment and key new ideas in the field complement taken‐for‐granted approaches and provide new opportunities for knowledge search. Based on a systematic co‐citation analysis, we provide a reflective review of the literature and make several contributions. We integrate existing research across disciplines and offer a synthesis of a fragmented research landscape to present a global view of the field. Moreover, we propose a novel external search concept and introduce the idea of “decoupled search.” Leveraging our synthesis and conceptualization further, we recommend future research directions for the entire field of external knowledge search for innovation.

中文翻译：

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回顾创新的外部知识搜索领域：理论基础和未来（重新）研究方向

寻求创新的外部知识领域具有悠久的传统，并激发了数个流派，产生了丰富而迅速的研究成果。但是，该领域受到两个关键限制。首先，跨学科研究的多元化阻碍了我们对整个领域的关注，包括其知识结构和核心思想。其次，商业环境的最新发展和该领域的关键新思想补充了公认的方法，并为知识搜索提供了新的机会。基于系统的共引分析，我们对文献进行了反思，并做出了一些贡献。我们整合了跨学科的现有研究，并提供了零散的研究概况的综合，以呈现该领域的全球视野。此外，我们提出了一种新颖的外部搜索概念，并介绍了“解耦搜索”的概念。进一步利用我们的综合和概念化，我们建议在整个外部知识搜索领域进行创新的未来研究方向。