Designing, managing and sustaining coopetition: a review of past achievements and future directions

This study integrates insights from a large-scale literature review using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling and bibliometric analysis to analyse 2104 articles, identifying latent themes across three decades of coopetition research (1996–2024). The analysis reveals 16 distinct topics that cluster into three overarching themes: designing coopetition (context and motives), managing coopetition (strategy and governance), and sustaining coopetition (relationships, trust, and tension management). Our findings show a clear shift in the coopetition literature from dyadic, trust-centric perspectives toward multi-actor, ecosystem-level configurations shaped by digitalisation, institutional mechanisms, and adaptive governance. Importantly, we demonstrate that trust and tensions are neither monolithic nor oppositional but co-evolving mechanisms whose roles vary across organisational, supply chain, and ecosystem contexts. Rather than viewing tensions as dysfunctions to be resolved, the review highlights their potential as productive inputs for learning, capability development, and adaptability. The study contributes by reframing sustainable coopetition as a dynamic capability grounded in continuous recalibration of cooperation–competition balances. Methodologically, it advances coopetition research by offering a replicable, longitudinal topic-modelling approach that disambiguates overlapping constructs and generates a focused agenda for future research. Collectively, the findings offer an integrated framework that provides a nuanced and multi-level understanding of how to design, manage, and sustain coopetition through context setting, strategic governance, and long-term capability building.