As they account for the largest share of employment and value added, services do not (or cannot) lie outside a Schumpeterian view of innovation phenomena. Of the various attempts…
Abstract
As they account for the largest share of employment and value added, services do not (or cannot) lie outside a Schumpeterian view of innovation phenomena. Of the various attempts at shedding more light on the mechanisms of innovation in service industries and firms, we consider the “reverse product cycle” to warrant special attention because of its highly thought‐provoking nature and its theoretical ambition. This article has two objectives: first, to present this interesting and still neglected theoretical study, and second, to evaluate on a theoretical and empirical level the extent to which Barras’ model meets the objective of a “theory of innovation in services”.
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Jon Sundbo, Luis Rubalcaba and Faïz Gallouj
This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework for understanding the role of servitization in the creative and cultural industries (CCI).
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework for understanding the role of servitization in the creative and cultural industries (CCI).
Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual model is proposed based on five elements: servitization drivers (digitalization in particular), agents, modes (based on the standardization/customization dynamics), servitization mechanisms (the authors provide a new classification) and service experiences.
Findings
CCI is not considered a natural part of the service sector. They drive economic and social development and are part of the innovation ecosystem. They are confronting a set of emerging dynamics in which servitization plays a leading role. Servitization is a way to move toward value co-creation by transforming existing business models. Servitization – with digitalization facilitates the co-creation of CCI-based experiences for customers, users and other stakeholders.
Research limitations/implications
In terms of further research implications, these theoretical and managerial considerations call for empirical research of the servitization of CCI to investigate how and how much it develops.
Practical implications
CCI companies need new business models that combine servitization, digitalization and value co-creation in the right mix. “One size fits all” does not work. Business models have to consider the right mix.
Originality/value
The proposed conceptual model provides a novel understanding of servitization and CCI and changes the focus from the “production” or push side (e.g. artistic creativity and messages) that has characterized much CCI theory toward the demand or pull side and buyers’ (users) increased power.
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Production of services requires the use of equipment and raw materials. It seems difficult, however, to study the connection between these devices and production of services…
Abstract
Production of services requires the use of equipment and raw materials. It seems difficult, however, to study the connection between these devices and production of services. Service activities can be represented as a structure of relations. On which elements of the service structure and with what specific consequences does the capital core of service activities act? After having proceeded to a macroeconomic examination of this connection, the survey takes a microeconomic approach, applied to US legal business. The conclusion is that the dead ends observed in the macroeconomic studies of service productivity could be partially eliminated thanks to this kind of analysis.
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Paul Windrum, Doris Schartinger, Luis Rubalcaba, Faiz Gallouj and Marja Toivonen
The research fields of service innovation and social innovation have, until now, been largely disconnected. At the most basic level, a great many social innovations are services…
Abstract
Purpose
The research fields of service innovation and social innovation have, until now, been largely disconnected. At the most basic level, a great many social innovations are services, often public sector services with social entrepreneurs organizing and delivering service innovations. As well as this overlap in the focus of research, scholars in both research fields address socio-economic concerns using multidisciplinary perspectives. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework that can bridge the two research fields.
Design/methodology/approach
Inter-linkages between service and social innovation are shown by identifying research areas in which both find a joint heuristic field. This approach has been illustrated in a set of case studies in the health sector in Europe.
Findings
The bridge between social innovation and service innovation research can be built when social innovation is examined through a multi-agent framework. The authors focus on social innovations where the co-creation of novel services is guided by the prominent position taken by citizens, social entrepreneurs or third sector organizations (NGOs or charities) in the innovation process. Of particular interest are the ways in which the interests of individual users and citizens are “represented” by third sector organizations.
Practical implications
The case study of the Austrian nationwide public access defibrillation programme provides an exemplar of the process of co-creation by which this social innovation was developed, implemented and sustained. Here the Austrian Red Cross acted on behalf of citizens, organizing an innovation network capable of creating both the demand and the supply side of a sustainable market for the production and safe application of portable automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in Austria. This process involved, first, raising public awareness of the need for portable defibrillators and acting as a user representative when inducing changes in the design of portable AEDs. Later, there was the institutionalization of AED training in every first aid training in Austria, work with local manufacturers to produce this device, and with large user organizations to install AEDs on their premises.
Originality/value
The paper develops multi-agent model of innovation that enables one to synthesize key concepts in social and service innovation literatures and, thereby, examine the dynamics of invention and diffusion of social innovations.
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Jean Gadrey, Faïz Gallouj and Olivier Weinstein
Despite the significance of services in the economic statistics,economic theories of innovation have tended to ignore them, or to assumethat innovation in services consists of…
Abstract
Despite the significance of services in the economic statistics, economic theories of innovation have tended to ignore them, or to assume that innovation in services consists of little more than adopting innovations developed in industry. Subjects this view to a critique based on three questions: Why is innovation in services misunderstood or neglected in economic theory? What do field observations indicate were the principal forms of innovation in services? How can these observations help to broaden and enrich the economic theory of industrial innovation?
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Lars Witell, Laurel Anderson, Roderick J. Brodie, Maria Colurcio, Bo Edvardsson, Per Kristensson, Line Lervik-Olsen, Roberta Sebastiani and Tor Wallin Andreassen
– The purpose of this study is to explore three paradoxes of service innovation and provide a way forward for fresh thinking on the topic.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore three paradoxes of service innovation and provide a way forward for fresh thinking on the topic.
Design/methodology/approach
Through a conceptual model of service innovation research, the authors challenge the “pro-change” bias and explore what can be learnt from the duality of service innovation.
Findings
This paper suggests that research moves beyond a firm perspective to study service innovation on multiple levels of abstraction. A conceptual model based on two dimensions, level (individual, organization and society) and outcome (success, failure), is used to pinpoint and explore three dualities of service innovation: adopt–reject, change–static and good–bad.
Originality/value
By challenging the traditional perspective on service innovation, the authors present new avenues for fresh thinking in research on service innovation. In this paper, the authors encourage researchers and managers to learn from failures and to acknowledge the negative effects of service innovation.
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Giuliano Magno de Oliveira Condé and Maria de Fátima Bruno-Faria
This study aims to explore the configuration of a public university service innovation: the phenotypic evaluation of self-declared black and brown applicants for access to college…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the configuration of a public university service innovation: the phenotypic evaluation of self-declared black and brown applicants for access to college undergraduate courses through racial quota in a Brazilian federal higher education institution (HEI).
Design/methodology/approach
By using qualitative methods and collecting data through semistructured interviews, this case study raises new explanatory aspects about service innovation in a noncommercial context.
Findings
Diversity in team composition and users’ sense of belonging emerged as unprecedented aspects of service innovation. The present study also coined another concept not verified in the literature: service cross-coproduction.
Research limitations/implications
Regarding the limitations of the study, the technological dimension, despite having been shown to underlie the political–administrative process of innovations in services, given its importance reinforced by the literature and the current temporal context itself, did not emanate from the data collected. In addition, the fact that the service innovation investigated has occurred recently prevented longitudinal research that could detail the effects of phenotypic evaluation on institutional performance indicators.
Practical implications
The ethical–methodological care used in the interaction and preservation of the psychological integrity of the users in the case study proved to be subject to systematization and has great potential to enhance the service experience of the users through the humanization of the service delivery process. The linkage of the user’s perception to the phenotypic diversity of people working in the new service provision highlights the importance of incorporating themes such as the diversity of teams’ composition and representative bureaucracy to the scientific production of service innovation and their role in coproduction. The findings suggest that the resource allocation supply of basic goods and services needed to provide the new service reduces the individual risk of academic community members involved with innovation. Further studies could explore this relation.
Social implications
Among the internal factors that influenced the configuration of service innovation, the idea of diversity in the team’s composition stood out. It based the phenotypic evaluation commission’s diverse constitution on gender, race, occupation and even nationality. It conferred greater legitimacy on service innovation, increasing the representation of groups that may not feel represented in public service delivery processes.
Originality/value
The results of the phenotypic evaluation case point to a new coproduction form emanating from the constitutive diversity of the phenotypic evaluation board members. This new type of coproduction is directly related to the complex, integrated and interdependent nature of the services that complement each other to enable the achievement of the objectives of a public university.
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Julia Viezzer Baretta, Micheline Gaia Hoffmann, Luciana Militao and Josivania Silva Farias
The purpose of this study is examined whether coproduction appears spontaneously in the literature on public sector innovation and governance, the citizens’ role in coproduction…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is examined whether coproduction appears spontaneously in the literature on public sector innovation and governance, the citizens’ role in coproduction and the implication of citizens’ participation in the governance of innovation networks.
Design/methodology/approach
The review complied with preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) protocol. The search was performed in the Ebsco, Scopus and WOS databases. The authors analyzed 47 papers published from 2017 to 2022. Thematic and content analysis were adopted, supported by MAXQDA.
Findings
The papers recognize the importance of the citizens in public innovation. However, only 20% discuss coproduction, evidencing the predominance of governance concepts related to interorganizational collaborations – but not necessarily to citizen engagement. The authors also verified the existence of polysemy regarding the concept of governance associated with public innovation, predominating the term “collaborative governance.”
Research limitations/implications
The small emphasis on “co-production” may result from the search strategy, which deliberately did not include it as a descriptor, considering the research purpose. One can consider this choice a limitation.
Practical implications
Considering collaborative governance as a governing arrangement where public agencies directly engage nonstate stakeholders in a collective decision-making process that is formal, consensus-oriented and deliberative (Ansell and Gash, 2007), the forum where the citizen is supposed to be engaged should be initiated by public agencies or institutions and formally organized, as suggested by Österberg and Qvist (2020) and Campomori and Casula (2022). These notions can be useful for public managers concerning their role and how the forums structure should be to promote collaboration and the presence of innovation assets needed to make the process fruitful (Crosby et al., 2017).
Originality/value
Despite the collaborative nature of public innovation, the need for adequate governance characteristics, and the importance of citizens in the innovative process, most studies generically address collaborative relationships, focusing on interorganizational collaboration, with little focus on specific actors such as citizens in the governance of public innovation. Thus, it is assumed that the literature that discusses public innovation and governance includes the discussion of coproduction. The originality and contribution of this study is to verify this assumption.