FORUM Resilience and Complexity A Bibliometric Review and Prospects for Industrial Ecology Sara Meerow and Joshua P. Newell Summary Resilience is an increasingly popular concept in academic research and public discourse and is closely connected to complex systems theory. This article reviews research on resilience and complexity in industrial ecology and the broader academy by conducting a bibliometric analysis of the academic literature over a 40-year period (1973–2014). The review revealed a large body of scholarship composed of five clearly identifiable intellectual communities, with resilience theory from ecology especially influential. Based on the study of ecosystems, these scholars conceptualize resilience as a dynamic and adaptive property of systems with multiple stable states that evolve over time. In comparison, resilience research in industrial ecology is limited and underdeveloped. Bibliometric analysis of this literature yielded just 37 publications and a scholarly network with no well-formulated research communities. This contrasts with industrial ecology scholarship on sustainability; a similar search yielded 1,581 publications. Given the emerging importance of the resilience concept and its relevance for sustainability issues, industrial ecology should expand research efforts in this area. The growing body of industrial ecology scholarship on complex systems provides a foundation to do so, as does the field’s long-standing practice of using ecological principles to inform the study and design of industrial ecosystems. The ar ticle concludes by discussing how industrial ecology would benefit from incorporating principles of dynamic resilience and, conversely, how industrial ecology approaches could advance broader resilience scholarship. Keywords: bibliometrics complex systems complexity industrial ecology resilience sustainability Introduction In the academy and in public discourse, there has been a remarkable rise in the use of the term “resilience” (figure 1). Re- ferring to the ability to recover from or adjust to a disturbance or change, resilience thinking is permeating an ever-broadening array of disciplines and thought traditions, including social- ecological systems (Folke et al. 2002; Carpenter et al. 2001; Walker et al. 2004), psychology (Bonanno 2004; Luthans et al. 2006), disaster and risk management (Coaffee 2008; Cutter et al. 2008; Gaillard 2010; Rose 2007), hazards research (God- schalk 2003; Klein et al. 2003), climate change adaptation (Nel- son et al. 2007; Tyler and Moench 2012; Tanner et al. 2009), Address correspondence to: Sara Meerow, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, 440 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1041, USA. Email: sameerow@umich.edu; Web: http://urbansustainability.snre.umich.edu © 2015 by Yale University DOI: 10.1111/jiec.12252 Editor managing review: Sybil Derrible Volume 00, Number 0 urban planning (Ahern 2011; Wilkinson 2011), international development (Perrings 2006; Brown and Westaway 2011), engineering (Fiksel 2003, 2006; Hollnagel et al. 2006), and energy systems and planning (McLellan et al. 2012; Molyneaux et al. 2012). This proliferation is apparent in policy arenas as well, including within agencies of the United Nations (UN), networks of local governments, such as ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives), and nongovern- mental organizations, such as the World Wildlife Fund (Evans 2011). In this era of tremendous social, ecological, and technical change and uncertainty, highlighted by the wide-ranging ef- fects of globalization processes and climate change, the notion www.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jie Journal of Industrial Ecology 1