Abstract

The world is being shaped by service. All the world’s most advanced economies are dominated by service, with many countries having more than 70 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) generated by it. The service sector also employs the largest number of people and it is the fastest growing sector, both in number of companies and employees. The questions posed in this book are: (1) How is the service sector growing; (2) what is service innovation; (3) what are the drivers of service innovation; and (4) how can organizations innovate service in a structured way?

The book views service as the value creating activity that customers perform in their own context: The role of a company is to provide the resources and knowledge to enable value creation. Based on this view, we develop a model of service innovation. Service innovation is a multifaceted concept dependent on the purpose of the innovation. These purposes could be to: differentiate, finance, help, experience, and streamline the process or offering. In turn, these result in: brand innovation, business model innovation, social innovation, experience innovation, process innovation, and behavioral innovation, respectively. In this book, we develop guidelines for what is required from the organizational perspective, how should an organization view its customers in order to be successful, what does a service development process look like, and how to transform an organization that is goods-centric to become service or solution provider.

Despite the heightened focus on service in many business sectors, most models and theories of innovation are based on a goods perspective, assuming that the norm is a physical good. We believe that the norm is actually experiential and service based. This book addresses this mismatch of theory and practice for the benefit of those who are seeking to understand, teach, and practice service innovation.

Keywords

business, cocreation, company, creativity, customer, experience, innovation, organization, process, product, research, service, user, value creation