Which regions produce the most innovation policy research?

This article uses the data indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus databases up to and including the year 2020 to map leading regions and trending topics in academic innovation policy research. The country analysis highlights four leading regions in this research field: Western Europe (led by the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and Spain), North America (led by the USA), Scandinavia (led by Sweden and Denmark), and Asia-Pacific (led by China and Australia). The most common keywords are used to develop a conceptual framework. Applying the Tree of Science approach, we classify the most influential studies into three categories: foundational studies (the roots), structural studies (the trunk), and recent studies (the leaves). This approach shows that trending topics are built around five main pillars: innovation systems, policy tools, knowledge management, sustainability, and entrepreneurship. Finally, based on analysis of the most common keywords and the most influential studies, we propose a Sextuple Helix model. This model consists of the Quintuple Helix (government, university, industry, knowledge society, and sustainability) with the added dimension of entrepreneurship. This model offers an analytical framework with massive potential for academic research on innovation policy in the current economic context.