Three decades (1996 to 2026) of competitiveness scholarship: intellectual foundations, thematic evolution and emerging frontiers in Competitiveness Review

Purpose This paper aims to explore three decades of research work on Competitiveness Review in the Scopus database to uncover the intellectual bases of the journal, its thematic configuration and research areas and possible future directions in competitiveness scholarship represented within the journal. Design/methodology/approach The research analysis decoded 908 articles and reviews published between 1996 and 2026. This is a reproducible workflow involving performance analysis, reference co-citation, reference publication-year spectroscopy, co-word analysis, TF-IDF/NMF semantic modelling, bibliographic coupling, Search Path Count main-path analysis, structural variation analysis and strategic thematic mapping using a Python computational approach. Findings The journal progressively moves from strategic and competitive positioning to areas more concerned with capabilities and institutions, innovation ecosystems and, more recently, digital and sustainability-based competitiveness. The Porterian tradition, the resource-based approach, clusters, internationalisation and institutional approaches have made their mark in the journal. The journal is currently transitioning to focus on innovation ecosystems, SMEs and digital competitiveness, ESG/governance and internationalisation. Notably, AI has come into view as part of the wider digital capabilities investigated. Originality/value The study incorporates the journal’s history, knowledge dissemination, current research areas and recently published papers that are structurally transformative, all within the same journal-level historical perspective, providing a four-era description of how competitiveness scholarship represented in Competitiveness Review has evolved over time.