| dc.description.abstract | Service innovation has gained interest in recent years and new initiatives have
been taken to integrate product innovation and service innovation research. One
of the reasons service innovation has gained interest is that it includes not only
innovation in service industries, but also service innovation as service
encapsulation of goods and other services. Still, the literature on service
innovation is fragmented and more knowledge is required to develop successful
innovation policies and innovation management practices.
This study investigates the relevance of customer involvement and value
network partnerships in service innovation. Both topics are reviewed in separate
literature studies reported in section 2. From these reviews, sets of testable
propositions are developed. The propositions on customer involvement are
further investigated by analyses of secondary data from the Community
Innovation Survey (CIS-3) and primary data from an empirical study of
customer involvement in the service innovation processes of selected service
firms conducted in 2005. Propositions on value network partnerships are
investigated by two case studies and by comprehensive analyses of the CIS-3
secondary data. The method applied in these studies is elaborated in section 3,
including how new measurement instruments capturing these service innovation
characteristics were developed.
The investigations show that customer involvement has no universal effect on
service innovation results. However, they also show that specific types of
involvement have positive effects on service innovation results and that these
effects are universal to all service firms. Thus, customer involvement may be
used to improve service innovation processes and obtain positive innovation
results, but the specific types of involvement must be carefully chosen to obtain the wanted innovation results. Similar results were found for value network
partnerships, which had a positive effect on innovation intensity for both newto-
the-market and new-to-the-firm innovations, while no general effects were
identified on innovation processes. Supplier cooperation, however, showed a
positive effect on innovation processes intensity. Thus, engaging in specific
cooperative arrangements seems to have positive effects on innovation intensity
and innovation processes, and further detail on these relationships are given in
sections 4 and 5.
This report contributes by the empirical findings reported above and by the other
detailed findings reported in sections 4 and 5. In addition, the theoretically
derived propositions presented in section 2 summarize much of the status of our
knowledge of customer involvement and value network partnerships in service
innovation. Furthermore, the measures developed to capture these elements may
be applied in further studies of service innovation processes and types. The
findings from this report have implications for innovation policy, service
management and service research, suggesting that service innovation differs
from product innovation and requires particular attention by innovation policy
makers. The findings also guide service firm managers in deciding how to
involve customers and engage in value network partnerships to obtain positive
service innovation results and help service innovation researchers in their
development of measurement instruments that better capture the unique
characteristics of service innovation. | en |
