Research on family firm innovation (FFI) has grown exponentially in recent years, as evidenced by the growing number of authors devoted to its study. However, to date, numerous questions remain unsolved about how family firms are coping with different innovation issues. In this context, this study aims to explore the scientific literature on FFI through performance indicators of scientific production, social networks of collaborations between authors and the intellectual and conceptual structures of the field. To accomplish this goal, bibliometric techniques are conducted, namely co-author, co-citation and co-word analyses. This study is carried out through a review of 975 published documents on FFI retrieved from the Web of Science and Scopus databases during the period 1987–2019. The findings reveal the richness of the FFI field and allows this large body of work to be organized into four theoretical roots and five thematic clusters. Additionally, this study proposes an integrative framework aimed at advancing new knowledge on the available research paths on FFI and identifying new research avenues to further develop the field. Hence, our research enriches the lively debate on FFI by offering a better understanding of the heterogeneous innovation behaviour of family firms.

近年来，有关家族企业创新（FFI）的研究呈指数增长，这一点已由致力于该研究的越来越多的作者证明。但是，迄今为止，关于家族企业如何应对不同的创新问题，仍有许多问题尚未解决。在这种情况下，本研究旨在通过科学生产的绩效指标，作者之间合作的社会网络以及该领域的知识和概念结构来探索有关FFI的科学文献。为了实现这一目标，进行了文献计量技术，即合著者，共引文和共词分析。这项研究是通过对1987-2019年期间从Web of Science和Scopus数据库中检索到的975个有关FFI的已发表文件进行审查而进行的。这些发现揭示了FFI领域的丰富性，并使这一庞大的工作被组织成四个理论根源和五个主题群。此外，本研究提出了一个综合框架，旨在推进有关FFI可用研究途径的新知识并确定进一步发展该领域的新研究途径。因此，我们的研究通过更好地了解家族企业的异类创新行为，丰富了关于FFI的热烈辩论。