Sustainability-oriented innovation capability management: a systematic literature review

Abstract

Objective. To analyze the literature on innovation capability, sustainability and digital transformation, and to identify the extent to which these constructs are integrated and addressed from a management perspective. Design/Methodology/Approach. A systematic review following PRISMA 2020 and a bibliometric analysis of two corpora were conducted: Scopus (3,029 articles, 2020–2025, English) and SciELO (1,285 documents, 1998–2026), totaling 4,314 documents. Textual verification, keyword co-occurrence analysis and community detection with the Louvain algorithm were applied. Results/Discussion. The field is expanding rapidly: 67.5% of Scopus articles were published in 2024–2025 and 20.3% of SciELO documents in 2025. Innovation capability appears in 3.7% of Scopus articles and 2.3% of SciELO titles. Only eight Scopus articles (0.26%) bring the three dimensions together, and one (0.03%) does so from the management of the capability. Conclusions. Integration between innovation, sustainability and digital transformation through innovation capability and its management remains insufficient. Originality/Value. The study quantifies an integration gap across complementary sources and supports models that link management, sustainability and digital transformation in service organizations.