•This study investigates the literary corpus on the on digital innovation in KMS.•This paper discusses on digital innovation for business models and performance.•This study evidences a SLR using Bibliometric.•This study is based on a database containing publications from year 1999 to 2020.•Innovation and sustainability in KMS are highlighted in the value creation perspective. This article investigates the literary corpus on digital innovation in knowledge management systems (KMS) to understand its role in business governance. The study introduces a broad survey of the scientific literature on this topic to understand how digital innovation promotes new business models through the optimization of new knowledge. We carried out a bibliometric analysis on a database, including 46 articles published in the last three decades (1990–2020). All the articles were written in English. The results show that research published on the topic reveals interesting implications for business models and business performance. These findings especially highlight the links between innovation and sustainability, revealing that digital transformation tools contribute over the long-term to the value creation process. This research contributes to the existing literature analyzing the KMS topic by considering it from the digital innovation processes perspective, pointing out the need to implement new knowledge creation and to share measures which support global and inclusive growth.