Aquaculture has experienced spectacular growth in the past decades, during which continuous innovation has played a significant role, but it faces increasing criticism regarding its ecological and social sustainability practices and the resulting challenges for future innovation processes. However, in the aquaculture literature, there is limited systematic knowledge of how innovation has been approached in terms of how the focus and the scope of aquaculture innovation processes are understood and managed. The objective of this paper is therefore to analyse the different approaches to innovation used in aquaculture development. The authors conducted a systematic review of the aquaculture literature, using an analytical lens derived from three main bodies of literature on approaches to conceptualize and manage innovation: Technology-driven, Systemic, and Business and Managerial approaches to innovation.