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The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the influence of the knowledge base (KB) of the company on driving forces of innovation processes in knowledge-intensive services (KIS) and to compare the level of innovativeness of the final services.

The paper investigates through qualitative research 11 KIS organisations with different KB.

The research results identified and described the influence of the KB on driving forces of innovations processes and its results in companies with four newly identified KBs (analytical, synthetic, symbolic and compliance).

Further research, based on a larger number of companies, is needed to confirm the results of this research and to complement the effect of the KB on driving forces of innovation.

This research can help organisations understand how to develop strategic plans and new ideas for innovative services depending on the KB of the organisation.

The description of successful innovation processes and results in several leading companies presented in the study may help other companies in identifying knowledge-integration practices to improve performance and innovation processes that support multiplicity, productivity and creativity.

The study systemised the sources of new ideas for innovation in companies with different KB, several driving forces of innovation were identified and how these forces are affected by each KB; lastly, innovation results were compared in companies with different KB.

This paper addresses the growing fragmentation between traditional and digital service innovation (DSI) research and offers a unifying metatheoretical framework.

Grounded in service-dominant (S-D) logic's service ecosystems perspective, this study builds on an institutional and systemic, rather than product-centric and linear, conceptualization of value creation to offer a unifying framework for (digital) service innovation that applies to both physical and digital service provisions.

This paper questions the commonly perpetuated idea that DSI fundamentally changes the nature of innovation. Instead, it highlights resource liquification—the decoupling of information from the technologies that store, transmit, or process this information—as a distinguishing characteristic of DSI. Liquification, however, does not affect the relational and institutional nature of service innovation, which is always characterized by (1) the emergence of novel outcomes, (2) distributed governance and (3) symbiotic design. Instead, liquification makes these three characteristics more salient.

In presenting a cohesive service innovation framework, this study underscores that all innovation processes are rooted in combinatorial evolution. Here, service-providing actors (re)combine technologies (or more generally, institutions) to adapt their value cocreation practices. This research demonstrates that such (re)combinations exhibit emergence, distributed governance and symbiotic design. While these characteristics may initially seem novel and unique to DSI, it reveals that their fundamental mechanisms are not limited to digital service ecosystems. They are, in fact, integral to service innovation across virtual, physical and blended contexts. The study highlights the importance of exercising caution in assuming that the emergence of novel technologies, including digital technologies, necessitates a concurrent rethinking of the fundamental processes of service innovation.

Although the digital era has given rise to major transformations in many industries, health care has been remarkably resistant to radical innovations coming outside the field. The purpose of this paper is to explore and explain how new ventures aim to break institutional arrangements (i.e. regulations, normative rules, and cultural-cognitive beliefs) protecting the field by introducing digitally enabled service innovations into health care markets.

The study is qualitative and interpretative in nature and utilizes case study as a research strategy. The paper is based on data that were collected through narrative interviews and document analysis from seven new ventures participating in a start-up accelerator program.

Results indicate that service innovations that require a change in the institutional structures of the health care system are enacted through three highly iterative key processes: institutional sensemaking that creates an understanding of prevailing institutional arrangements and that constructs meaning for institutional change efforts, theorization of change through linguistic device, and modifications of institutions by building legitimacy and mobilizing external constituencies.

The findings provide practical insights into how new ventures struggle, navigate, and negotiate on specific alternatives related to institutional change while pursuing the introduction of innovations to market.

This research extends the institutional perspective on service innovation by zooming into micro-level processes of institutional change driven by new ventures. The study develops the theory of institutional entrepreneurship by highlighting cognitive processes of change, and suggests incorporating “institutional thinking” more tightly into the study and management of service innovation.

Studies with a user approach in a public service context are still rare, making the contribution of this study worthwhile. This paper aims to present a case of facilitating innovativeness by involving stakeholder groups in the development of service production in the public sector. The case is related to the provision of housing and well‐being services to ageing people. The study proposes focusing on the front‐end stage of an innovation process: the ideation phase in a virtual idea generation environment, in which fruitful and fresh ideas that are based on customers' needs are sought for in order to support the innovation process.

A constructive research approach is applied in this study. Central theoretical building blocks are provided by the extended SECI model as presented by Uotila, Melkas and Harmaakorpi, Amabile's componential theory of creativity and Burt's and Granovetter's arguments regarding structural holes and weak ties.

Based on the evaluation, it can be argued that the open innovation model and particularly the inclusion of external information and knowledge from potential service users generated, despite some shortcomings, new insights and added to the value of the development process.

The paper proposes a model that can be utilized in facilitating the novelty value of presented ideas in the front end of the innovation process and also critically discusses the challenges of the applied model, especially from the point of view of the brokering function needed during the process.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on an aspect of service innovation processes that has remained fairly hidden so far, namely, the role of emotions.

The authors use the strategizing approach from strategy research, which focusses on detailed processes, practices, and discourse, to understand the influence of emotions on service innovation processes. The empirical data stem from a longitudinal ethnographic study of a service innovation process.

In the investigated case, the dominant emotion of anxiety is revealed. The authors focus on this emotion in order to explore how it affects the innovation process itself and the outcome. The authors identify five emotion-driven practices that form elements of what the authors label emotional strategizing.

Emotion seems to give energy and direction to the service innovation process. This is both positive and challenging for top-level managers.

The authors reveal a hidden aspect of service innovation processes – the effect of emotions. Furthermore, the authors show that emotions are important because they give energy and direction to the innovation work, and emerge in practices. Emotional strategizing, as a new term, gives visibility to this important issue.

This paper aims to explore and demonstrate how an ethnographic research approach can reveal new aspects of the dynamics of service innovation processes. In contrast to the retrospective research approach found in most service innovation research, the ethnographic approach captures the innovation process as it unfolds.

An ethnographical investigation of an incremental service innovation at a bank was conducted. The innovation activities were performed jointly by a team of bank members from various functions and external business partners. This was a formal project with a pre-specified plan, budget, and timetable.

The ethnographical approach, capitalizing on its real-time, multi-methods, longitudinal, and up-close characteristics, made it possible to capture unforeseen events and issues at the micro level. The authors suggest that such critical events determine what direction the innovation process takes. The initial intentions and plans were partly realized; new issues emerged during the innovation work and were realized, while other emergent issues were finally not realized.

The study suggests a framework that can be used to identify four categories of micro-level processes. Critical events in the micro-level processes represent potential turning points and are important foci in practice and remain issues for further research.

Managers may benefit from being open to including emergent issues and understanding the micro-level dynamics of the innovation process.

This study illustrates how the ethnographic research approach captures the dynamics of innovation processes and the potential challenges and possibilities for innovation managers. This finding suggests the need to address micro-level dynamics.

Mobile service innovations are crucial for the long‐term success of companies operating in turbulent and uncertain environments. These innovations need to be introduced at a rapid pace while at the same time companies have to absorb market information during the new mobile service development. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to construct a conceptual framework on the critical antecedents of project learning and time‐to‐market during new mobile service development. An extensive case study research involving four innovation projects was performed in a leading Dutch telecommunications company. With respect to project learning, our research findings indicate the crucial influence of a flexible decision architecture, project team memory, a high information awareness and a good fit between information requirements and capabilities. Both innovative and coordinative communication are required throughout the service innovation process. With regard to time‐to‐market, our research results point to the essential impact of project complexity, top management support, information power of suppliers and technological synergy. Finally, a medium level of project learning is the ideal condition for a fast time‐to‐market during mobile service innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how two Islamic banks have involved employees in developing service product innovations.

The case studies describe the roles of employees during specific stages of development process of service product innovations. The data were collected through face-to-face oral interviews with senior product development managers and marketing managers.

The results suggest that employees' involvement is encouraged in the selected banks through the presence of a product champion, involvement of front-line employees, support from the management, multifunctional team structure and employee external contacts. A Sharia board was at the heart of the development process of service product innovations in Islamic banks. It was also revealed that employees are more involved in developing service product innovation for retail customers in comparison to the corporate customers.

Given the focus of current literature on conventional banks, the present study attempts to widen the service innovation discussion to include Islamic banking services. The two cases have practical implications for managers and add to the academic knowledge via the extension of a concurrent staged model.

There is a dearth of empirical research on the impact of external knowledge search on innovation performance in different categories of service firms. This study explores the effectiveness of the breadth of external search on product and process innovations in German firms. In particular, the author modelled a non-linear relationship between the breadth of knowledge and product and process innovations.

Drawing on the Mannheim Innovation Panel (MIP) data for the German service firms in the period 2014–2016, the author reported findings from a bivariate probit model which took into account mutual interdependence between product and process innovations. Moreover, the model was separately estimated for knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) and other services. For comparative purposes, the author also estimated the model for manufacturing firms.

Empirical findings uniformly indicated an inverted U-shaped effect of the breadth of knowledge on both product and process innovations. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that using up to three knowledge sources increases the probability of a joint implementation of product and process innovations. These findings hold for both KIBS firms and other services. However, those service firms that focussed on a single type of innovation experienced diminishing returns to external knowledge when exploiting more than one source of knowledge. These results indicated that a simultaneous introduction of different types of innovation required diverse knowledge sources. In contrast, when focussing on a single type of innovation, service firms experienced diminishing returns when multiple sources were used. However, this finding was only partially found for manufacturing firms. Accordingly, this study’s findings provided support for the demarcation approach, insofar as the breadth of knowledge had a heterogenous impact on innovation in manufacturing relative to service firms.

Previous studies on the breadth of knowledge search mostly examined its influence on innovation performance without separately analysing manufacturing and service firms. The present study focussed on service firms that were further divided into KIBS and other service firms. By investigating potentially non-linear relationships between knowledge breadth and product and process innovations, it illustrated how different innovation strategies were affected by a diverse pool of external knowledge sources.

The purpose of this study is to identify different service innovation drivers, innovation process activities and to understand industrial services innovation management and coordination, as well as to develop a framework for industrial service innovation management and coordination.

The study involved collection of information and data from the literature and the Norwegian oil and gas (O&G) industry. A survey was conducted to get an overview of existing practices and guided interviews were conducted to confirm the findings of the survey.

The study indicates that the market needs are considered the most important innovation process driver, feedback from the customers is the most important activity to encourage service innovations, whilst return on investments is the most important decision‐making factor in evaluating innovation feasibility. Employees are the most important source of innovation ideas. Furthermore, interactions between different companies, as well as involvement of customer, employees and suppliers in the innovation process are becoming increasingly important.

The study shows that service providers and receivers often collaborate in the innovation processes, and that many of the activities are performed simultaneously. This results in the collaborative parties needing to put resources on managing and coordinating the innovation process in a structured, effective and efficient way. The proposed framework for service innovation management and coordination provides practitioners with a structured approach to manage industrial service innovations.

The findings are based on the data collected from a number of companies from the O&G industry in Norway.

The paper identifies different innovation process drivers and activities and proposes a modified framework for industrial services innovation management and coordination based on the study analysis, interaction with the practitioners and using available literature on innovation management.