There is extensive research exploring the role of external partners in innovation processes. Despite common interests, different literature streams have only limited connection and there is no systematic overview integrating them: What are salient topics when research considers external partners in the innovation process? Where are structural differences between these literature streams? Against this backdrop, we conduct a computational literature review of 17 literature streams based 7,356 full text articles. As first review consolidating these literature streams into an overarching perspective, our analysis results in a topic landscape of 97 topics that describe the current state of research. Our topic model reveals a dominance of phenomenological research, calling for an increase in theoretical groundwork to span bridges between different literature streams. Through a network analysis, we identified four clusters among literature streams: Collaborative Ventures and their Management, Supply Chain Collaboration, Collaboration in Regional Clusters, Open Innovation Approaches and Ecosystems. In particular, our analysis shows the distinct position of the Open Innovation Approaches and Ecosystems cluster. While the cluster attracts large attention, it also faces the risk of becoming a fragmented research field. Finally, we provide four avenues for future research based on a list of concrete research question.
