Identifying Themes and Patterns on Management of Horticultural Innovations with an Automated Text Analysis

Abstract

This research provides an overview on horticulture innovations in the last decade through a literature review and the use of a computer qualitative data analysis. We used Leximancer text mining software to identify concepts, themes and pathways linked with horticulture innovations. The software tool enabled us to “zoom out” to gain a broad perspective of the pooled data, and it indicated which studies clustered around the dominant topic. It displays the extracted information in a visual form, to wit, an interactive concept map, which summaries the interconnected themes and demonstrates any interdependencies. The text mining analysis revealed that the themes strongly related to “innovation” are “water”, “urban”, “system”, “countries” and “technology”. The outputs identified have been interpreted to discover meaning from the content analysis, since the software can facilitate a comprehensive and transparent data coding but cannot replace researcher’s interpretive work. Furthermore, we focused on the diffusion and the barriers for the spread of innovation, pointing out the differences about developing and advanced countries. This analysis allows the researcher to have a holistic understanding of the examination area and could lead to further studies.