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This study aims to provide in-depth insight into how value is co-created on different levels of context (i.e. dyads, triads and networks) within a service ecosystem, and thus examine the impact of indirect service-for-service exchanges on the value co-creation process, the interdependencies between different levels of context and the roles in the value co-creation process that the actors play depending on the context level.

Using the theoretical framework of service-dominant logic, the authors carry out a case study analysis of a service ecosystem built around a digital platform where independent confectioneries sell customised cakes to customers.

This paper provides evidence for the importance of a wider context extending beyond producer–customer dyad as well as indirect service-for-service exchanges in the process of value co-creation. This paper also conceptualises trans-contextual exchanges, that is, exchanges occurring between different context levels of the service ecosystem. The analysis also allowed us to establish that the same actors simultaneously play different roles in the service ecosystem, depending on the level of context.

This study highlights the importance of indirect service-for-service exchanges and trans-contextual exchanges. Constituting discreet avenues of value co-creation, often obscured from a single actor of a service ecosystem, these two types of exchanges are nonetheless crucial to understanding the full scope of the ecosystem’s interconnectedness, the varying roles of its actors, as well as supporting the scaling up process of the service ecosystem.

Althogh there are studies examining value co-creation within wider contexts or ecosystems from the service-dominant logic perspective, usually little attention is paid to the indirect service-for-service exchanges and the interplay between different levels of context.

There is a need to understand value co-creation in service ecosystems that engage multiple actors with different goals. This study aims to extend the understanding of value co-creation by considering the orchestration of service ecosystems with reference to resource-integration processes.

An exploratory case study approach is used to analyze actors' roles in resource orchestration within a service ecosystem, gathering data from the macro, meso and micro levels of an Italian hospitality and tourism services ecosystem.

A framework is devised that highlights the intersection between orchestration and resource integration for value co-creation processes across the macro, meso and micro levels in service ecosystems. This extends the understanding of service ecosystem dynamics, especially how new value co-creation structures emerge, by emphasizing the circular causality between system levels. Findings show how orchestrating resource integration activities initiate and institutionalize non-linear value co-creation processes.

Resource integration orchestration within and between ecosystem levels is a possible response to societal challenges and for creating economic, cultural and social value across the community. The study offers policymakers insights into developing new competencies for developing actions according to a logic of socially and sustainable value.

This study advances the understanding of service orchestration by expanding the concept and the feasibility of service ecosystem orchestration. It offers insights into the importance of orchestrating resource integration to the emergence and vitality of service ecosystems themselves. The study responds to the need for empirical studies on value co-creation.

In innovation networks, SMEs' capability to innovate is both enhanced and restricted by more powerful or better positioned partners. The purpose of this article is to ask how managers of processing SME suppliers in Italian and Swiss food innovation networks experience their relationships with innovation network partners and how they configure modes of interaction with them.

A series of problem centered interviews with managers of six Swiss and five Italian food sector SMEs was conducted.

Findings describe how SME managers in the two regions perceive the nature of interaction as well as benefits and disadvantages resulting from asymmetric relationships within networked innovation process. Differences in the perception frame and their impact on behavior in innovation networks are analyzed.

The data are only valid for the food sector in the two regional markets. Furthermore, this paper only displays the perspective of managers of first and second processing food SME suppliers. Additional data should be gathered on the perspective of other network partners as well as on real‐time communication between them.

The findings suggest that active cooperation with especially customers in innovation networks supports innovation opportunities of processing food SME suppliers.

Scholars so far have comprehensively deduced potential advantages and problems resulting from asymmetries in power and positioning of partners for knowledge sharing in innovation networks but have not yet investigated its specifics. Particularly, empirical work on the perspective of managers from processing SME suppliers on innovation related cooperation with their partners in the value chain on networked innovation is yet almost scant.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a fresh framing of innovation, as service innovation/value innovation.

By examining the visions, patterns and outcomes of three different research approaches to understanding innovation – goods-dominant (G-D) logic, the resource-based approach and service-dominant (S-D) logic – the authors strive to outline the contribution of each to the debate on innovation. This investigation involves a comprehensive literature review. Scrutiny of a case company provides a means of identifying and illustrating how these approaches play out in a real business context.

A framework for innovation builds on the comparison of the three research approaches. G-D logic, when analysed in terms of new product development and new service development, positions innovation as an output (a new good or service) of a business's internal processes, with the firm as the main actor. The resource-based approach establishes the drivers of innovation as knowledge, capabilities and relationships, but the firm is still the main innovator. S-D logic addresses “open” innovation processes in which all actors in the network can mobilize and integrate their resources to become value co-innovators.

This study builds on the literature review by offering a more systematic way of dealing with the different research traditions in innovation debate.

This study spurs managers to question the validity of dominant logic and how it affects the decision-making process. The conceptualization of innovation within S-D logic provides new avenues for decision makers and practitioners to tackle topical challenges of global competition.

The value of this paper lies in defending the premise that S-D logic is better suited than the other two research traditions to frame current innovation within the context of global competition because it moves innovation beyond mainstream conceptualization: from “products and services” to “service and value”, from “buyer-seller dyads” to “ecosystem relationships”, and from “closed/linear process” to “open/co-created process”.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the present level of the adoption of TQM in firms, and to outline an evaluation of its evolving path.

A qualitative method was chosen to analyze the “state‐of‐the‐art” of TQM. A total of 21 firms were investigated, using the case study method, in detailed multiple case studies.

In most of the investigated firms, TQM was characterized by stronger and stronger cultural and behavioural features. The co‐ordinated and systematic development of TQM basic factors helps the priming and feeding of innovative processes favouring the course towards business excellence.

The research is based on a sample of firms and it is necessary to amplify the research process including other enterprises and to outline some forms of categories (with cultural and behavioural aspects).

If TQM is appropriately managed, it supports the organization in achieving excellence, the real source of stakeholder value's continuous creation. In order to achieve business excellence and stakeholder value, TQM importance can be found in two main levels: developing a strategic dimension and the organizational dimension of synergies among TQM, business excellence and stakeholder value.

This paper provides an important contribution in the understanding of the evolution of TQM, stressing theoretical and practical implications in a new perspective. This is a composite perspective based on three elements: innovation, excellence, and value.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse innovation in the light of service‐dominant (S‐D) logic and service science as a value‐creating process occurring through a many‐to‐many network resource integration.

The paper utilises S‐D logic and network theory to present case study research of a highly innovative Italian firm. The study investigates three innovation projects and the processes of interaction and integration that take place among the members of the networks involved in each project.

The traditional understanding of innovation, in which the supplier is the innovator and the customer is the recipient of (or perhaps the stimulus for) innovation, is replaced by an understanding of innovation based on S‐D logic in which customers and other stakeholders become real co‐innovators who exchange and integrate resources to co‐create value.

Future studies could examine the antecedents and implications of the interaction and integration processes of collaborative innovation.

Innovation should be pursued as an open process in which all of the network's actors mobilise resources to become co‐innovators who co‐create value for themselves and other stakeholders.

This paper offers a widened perspective of innovation by using S‐D logic to emphasise the role of the network and the many‐to‐many interaction between stakeholders in developing value‐creating innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of total quality management (TQM) as a knowledge enabler in the creation and exploitation of organisational knowledge.

This qualitative investigation adopts a case‐study methodology to analyse the role of TQM in knowledge creation in 21 prominent firms, utilising an investigation framework based on the “socialisation,” “externalisation,” “combination,” and “internalisation” model of knowledge generation.

TQM is shown to be an effective enabler of knowledge generation. TQM provides policies and tools (such as general involvement of all employees, teamwork, feedback mechanisms, and widespread communication) that are inherently useful as enablers of knowledge creation and dissemination.

Future studies should investigate the specific causal nexus between TQM and product innovation.

TQM can be utilised to support an organisation's utilisation of corporate knowledge as a real source of competitive advantage.

Empirical research on knowledge and quality management is scanty. This paper addresses the gap by empirically examining the relationship between TQM and knowledge creation.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for understanding service design and how service design relates to central concepts within service marketing.

For companies, service design is growing in importance and has become a crucial capability to survive in the service-dominant economy. Service design increases the capacity to improve not only service experiences but also organizational design. On this premise, the authors propose a conceptual framework.

By relating service design to research efforts within service marketing, dual value creation can be enhanced. As such, the conceptual framework portrays service design as an enhancer of customer experience and organizational performance.

To the authors knowledge, service design has not been discussed in the service marketing literature. Thus, this is the first attempt to see service design in light of well-established service marketing models such as SERVQUAL and an updated version of the Service-profit-chain.

The purpose of this study is to explore three paradoxes of service innovation and provide a way forward for fresh thinking on the topic.

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.

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on Temporary Shops, a recent communication and distribution innovation used by firms in order to improve interaction with customers and to reinforce brand loyalty and equity. The main aim of the study is to frame the Temporary Shops phenomenon in Italy and to analyze its value co‐creation potential.

The DART model proposed by Prahalad and Ramaswamy has been chosen as the theoretical framework for understanding the Temporary Shops phenomenon. The authors investigate the process of value co‐creation inside the Temporary Shops through its four key building blocks, namely, dialogue, access, risk/benefits and transparency. Through a multiple‐case study, the authors study in‐depth evidence from five leading firms that represent the main Temporary Shops in Italy over the last two years.

Temporary Shops provide a locus of value co‐creation in which the interactive and experiential relationship between the firm and the customer is engaged and value co‐creation emerges.

There are two main limitations: this study is exploratory and analyzes co‐creation only from the company perspective. Further studies may widen the unit of analysis from firm to customer's network and thus provide further insights about antecedents and implications of the interaction in a multi‐sensory context.

The work contributes to understanding the role of experiential environment in value co‐creation processes, as well as analyzing the contribution of a new distribution phenomenon with respect to co‐creation through the application of the DART model.