Harmony in Chaos: A Comprehensive Exploration of Disruption and Sustainability Through NLP and Network Analysis

The widespread adoption of information and communication technologies, along with the digital shift, predominantly relies on the practical application of novel methods that shape the essence of innovation. While literature highlights the swift pace of digitalization, it also encourages us to consider the notion of “disruption” within the framework of sustainability. This paper aims to examine the disruptions in the innovation of processes associated with sustainable development. We present a rigorous (quantitative) analysis of relevant literature spanning from 1995 to 2023, focusing on three research directions: (1) establishing a recursive thematic structure to categorize periods in the literature; (2) identifying defining topics; and (3) determining lexical units that serve as connectors between thematic groups. Through the application of natural language processing and a social network approach, the results reveal consistent topics across years rather than time-specific patterns, with processes and impact evaluation emerging as central junction points.