The success of service innovations is intertwined with firms' capabilities to coordinate, orchestrate, and collaborate with a set of external actors. Adopting an ecosystem and dynamic capability ...perspective, this article examines ecosystem-related capabilities for developing service innovation in product-centric firms. The research uses a mixed-methods approach focusing on the energy utility sector: (1) a survey with 133 managers from 28 firms that allows a comparison of ecosystem-related capabilities between firms with high and low service-innovation intensity; and (2) a complementary interview study with 8 of these firms that have high service-innovation intensity, allowing a detailed understanding of the relevant ecosystem-related capabilities to be developed.
From the data we derive a set of 12 ecosystem-related capabilities for service innovation related to the sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring of external resources. The results indicate that firms with high service-innovation intensity possess significantly stronger ecosystem-related capabilities than firms with lower service-innovation intensity. Those firms also seem to sense and seize external opportunities and resources to a greater extent in order to reconfigure their service-related ecosystems. The findings also show that successful service innovators consider not only value-adding partnerships, such as suppliers and customers, to be relevant for service innovation, but also relationships with non-direct value-adding ecosystem stakeholders (e.g., local governments, communities, legislators).
Service innovation has become increasingly important for the growth of developed and developing countries. Despite an extensive body of literature on the role of joint innovation capabilities in ...improving a firm's innovativeness, the multivariate influences of operant resources and joint innovation capabilities, as well as the interplay among these in the prediction of service innovation have not been scrutinized in the context of B2B SMEs in a developing country. This study aims to fill this gap by testing a model that shows the relationships among complementarity of knowledge and capabilities as operant resources, joint innovation capabilities, and service innovation. We derive hypotheses about these relationships and test them using data from a sample of 302 respondents from 151 firms operating in the UAE. The results show that the relationships between complementarity of knowledge and joint innovation capabilities, and between joint innovation capabilities and service innovation, are significant and positive. They also show that the mediation effect of joint innovation capabilities on the relationship between complementarity of knowledge and service innovation is positive and full. This study also tests the moderating roles of competitive intensity and demand uncertainty in the relationship between joint innovative capabilities and service innovation and finds that their connection is stronger when competitive intensity is high.
•Knowledge complementarity helps develop joint innovation capabilities.•However, complementarity of capabilities has no such effect.•Joint innovation capabilities can create superior service innovation.•Competition enhances the effect of joint innovation capabilities on service innovation.•Joint innovation capability in emergent markets rely more on knowledge complementarity.
Service innovation is often viewed as a process of accessing the necessary resources, (re)combining them, and converting them into new services. The current knowledge on success factors for service ...innovation, such as formalized new service development (NSD) processes, predominantly comes from studying large firms with a relatively stable resource base. However, this neglect situations in which organizations face severe resource constraints. This paper argues that under such constraints, a formalized new service development process could be counter-productive and a bricolage perspective might better explain service innovation in resource-constrained environments. In this conceptual paper, we propose that four critical bricolage capabilities (addressing resource scarcity actively, making do with what is available, improvising when recombining resources, and networking with external partners) influence service innovation outcomes. Empirical illustrations from five organizations substantiate our conceptual development. Our discussion leads to a framework and four testable propositions that can guide further service research.
Archetypes of Service Innovation Helkkula, Anu; Kowalkowski, Christian; Tronvoll, Bård
Journal of service research : JSR,
08/2018, Letnik:
21, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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Service innovation is a key source of competitive differentiation across firms and markets. Despite growing attention from practitioners and academics alike, systematic scholarly inquiry into service ...innovation’s diverse theoretical foundations has to date been limited. This article explores different approaches to service innovation and proposes a typology of four archetypes, each informed by a distinct theoretical perspective and by different underlying assumptions. Process-based and output-based archetypes focus on value-adding phases and output value, respectively. Experiential and systemic archetypes have attracted less attention but become central for firms seeking to cocreate phenomenologically determined value within the service ecosystem. The article also contributes to service innovation research and practice by bringing together the existing archetypes, which were previously treated separately. Juxtaposing these archetypes and emphasizing value and value cocreation, the article proposes an integrative view of how novel value cocreation can be enhanced in service innovations. Finally, we develop an agenda for future research, encouraging researchers and managers to plan service innovations systematically, deploying each archetype in value cocreation, and combining them within an integrative approach.
Research on service innovation appears in several research disciplines, with important contributions in marketing, management, and operations research. Although the concept is widely used, few ...research papers have explicitly defined service innovation. This dearth of research is the motivation for the present study. Through a systematic review of 1301 articles on service innovation appearing in academic journals between 1979 and 2014, this article examines research defining service innovation. The study identifies the key characteristics within 84 definitions of service innovation in different perspectives (assimilation, demarcation and synthesis) and shows how the meaning of the concept is changing. The review suggests that the large variety in definitions limits and hinders knowledge development of service innovation.
The complexity of today's world is constantly creating new challenges for higher education institutions, and they must continually be consistent and accountable to maintain standards of excellence ...and compete in international education markets. Being or becoming an entrepreneurial higher education institution is a response to these challenges. There is no "unique" approach, but there are different ways in which higher education institutions behave in an entrepreneurial and creative way. The purpose of this article was to explain how universities can become more entrepreneurial by changing how they provide knowledge. This article is based on the results of a literature review in the fall and winter of 2020 and is in line with the doctoral dissertation that is currently being done in the "Virtual School, Medical Education and Management, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences." After 1989, a review of the limited, focused literature on service innovation, with an emphasis on knowledge-based service innovation, was done. Service innovation is multidimensional and interactive in nature and can be examined from both technological (information and communication technology developments) and non-technological (organizational innovations) aspects. Accordingly, knowledge-based services include services based on professional knowledge and technology knowledge. Universities need to focus on innovation in both aspects of knowledge-based services. If universities are to become entrepreneurial universities, it is important to explain the comprehensive model of entrepreneurial universities by focusing on the dimensions, concepts, opportunities, challenges, and requirements for knowledge service innovation and then apply it to medical universities to fits their needs.
Service innovation acts as society's engine of renewal and provides the necessary catalyst for the service sector's economic growth. Despite service innovation's importance, the concept remains fuzzy ...and poorly defined. Building on an extensive and systematic review of 1046 academic articles, this research investigates and explores how service innovation is defined and used in research. Results identify four unique service innovation categorizations emphasizing the following traits: (1) degree of change, (2) type of change, (3) newness, and (4) means of provision. The results show that most research focuses inward and views service innovation as something (only) new to the firm. Interestingly, service innovation categorizations appear to neglect both customer value and financial performance.
•To combine sustainability and service innovation to contribute to the SDGs;.•An analytical procedure to analyse the firms’ contribution to the SDGs;.•Definition of core SDGs, which are relevant in ...aligning firm's value-creation to SDGs’ contribution.
Even though the private sector plays a pivotal role in the success of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the assessment of the firms’ contribution to the Goals has so far been an underexplored and complex issue. This paper proposes an analytical approach to evaluate the contribution of different sustainability and service innovation strategies to the SDGs.
The proposed analytical approach uses open secondary data and content analysis to collect and analyse the sustainability and service innovation activities of a sample of firms. It also develops the Sustainability-orientated Service Innovation (SOSI) Matrix, a tool to map the firms’ strategies and their contribution to the SDGs.
The results indicate that the various combinations of sustainability and service innovation strategies lead to differences in the firms’ contribution to the SDGs. In particular, service innovation has been shown to be a fundamental mediator to contribute to the SDGs.
The main points of this work are i) the importance of combining sustainability and service innovation to contribute to the SDGs; ii) the development of an analytical procedure to analyse the firms’ contribution to the SDGs; iii) the definition of core SDGs, which are relevant in aligning firm's value-creation to SDGs’ contribution. Finally, the study is based on an in-depth analysis of 23 manufacturers from the fast-growing fitness equipment industry, which has so far received only piecemeal attention in the sustainability and management literature.
European manufacturing companies face increasing pressure to adopt digitalization technologies discussed in the emerging paradigm of Industry 4.0. On the other hand, innovation capabilities both in ...terms of introducing new products and new services are of outmost importance to gain competitive advantage. Technology adoption and firm innovativeness are often interrelated, but this relation is not well understood, and in particular, the way in which digital technology adoption, product and service innovation, and competitive advantage are related to process industries has not yet been investigated. This paper develops and operationalizes a conceptual framework for product and service innovation, thereby incorporating digital technology adoption. Through an exploratory study, using quantitative data from the European Manufacturing Survey (EMS)-2015, we analyze data from 747 cases in the process industries from D, NL, A, CH, and DK. Our main findings show that companies with higher levels of digital technology implementation (breadth and depth) can introduce more radical product and service innovations. Companies with both radical innovations and service innovation make significantly greater use of their implemented technologies’ potential. Radical product innovation also yields higher returns on sales, but contrary to our assumptions, service innovation in process industries does not. We find that, in the low-tech sectors, digital technologies are used to generate product and services innovations which then translate into higher performance. In contrast, in the high-tech sectors, digital technologies have a direct impact on performance and are thus rather accustomed to realizing the efficiency gains not primarily used for innovation.
•How is digital technology adoption related to product and service innovation of firms and their competitive advantage?•Digital technologies serve as a catalyst for radical product innovation and service innovation.•In low-tech industries, there is an indirect effect of digital technologies on competitive advantage via innovation.•In high-tech industries, a direct effect of digital technology adoption on competitive advantage (ROS) is observed.
In this qualitative study, we examine digital leadership (DL) capabilities and their positive influence on the management of technology-driven change by leveraging service innovations. The context of ...digital transformation (DT) has triggered a new leadership paradigm, among others referred to as digital leadership (DL). However, despite its practical relevance, leadership research has yet paid little attention to conceptualise DL as an approach to digitally transform organisations.
Drawing on mid- and top-level mangers' experiences with service innovation projects, and based on Grounded Theory, we develop a taxonomy of DL-related capabilities and a conceptual framework which exemplifies their influences on dynamic service innovation capabilities (DSICs). DSICs build on the dynamic capabilities view (DCV) and represent the "organisational muscle" to repeatedly deliver service innovations indicating an effective management of technology-driven change.
Taxonomy results show that aggregated dimensions in terms of a digital leader's personal, social, and organisational capital serve as underpinnings (DL-related capabilities) to drive strategic change in DT contexts. The conceptual framework further reveals that especially the personal and organisational capital of a digital leader owns several strong and moderate influences on DSICs which demonstrates DL's "long arm" on the management of technology-driven change. Our findings contribute to leadership research by advancing the conceptualisation of DL and by adding a novel micro-foundational perspective towards the DCV discourse. As organisations struggle to realise the full benefits of DT initiatives, our results also provide a valuable contribution for practitioners by supporting them to strategically prepare for the human-related challenges of DT.
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