A Research Agenda for Driving Innovation to Overcome Barriers in the Automotive Components Industry

The automotive industry is important to any country's economy. With continuously changing customer needs, Automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) invest heavily in innovation to remain competitive and develop automobiles that suit their customer's wants and needs. This article follows the PRISMA approach for scoping reviews to analyze and review the literature on the various innovation barriers in the automotive components industry. We also review various frameworks developed to mitigate these barriers. The analysis was conducted using Bibliometrix and VOSViewer. The results determined that the barriers to innovations in the automotive components industry are managerial, technological, regulatory, financial, and market related. These barriers thus affect the ability to move new ideas through Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) of various innovations in this industry. The frameworks and models reviewed aim to alleviate these barriers focus on improving the technology capability of firms, promoting collaboration amongst OEM knowledge hubs, and using technical innovation-friendly strategies. We present a research agenda for further work that could explore the barriers to innovation in the automotive components sector.