Innovation in Services

Professional Services Firms (PSFs) are an important form of knowledge-intensive organization with an educated and professionalised workforce and a partnership model of governance. This article reports the results of a three-year longitudinal study of the implementation of a successful technology-enabled innovation programme in a leading PSF. The research was conducted using a cooperative research methodology involving academics and executives co-creating knowledge together and an abductive approach to theorizing to explore technology-enabled innovation in this important type of organization. The process of developing a capability for technology enabled innovation was found to be supported by the commitment of leaders, the presence of certain catalysts for change, and a carefully crafted management process sympathetic to existing
culture and practices. As the research proceeded, two additional insights emerged that helped explain the success of the innovation programme: experimental space and intellectual space. Experimental space includes new formal processes and practices, and new physical spaces, for
encouraging and guiding the search for innovation. Intellectual space includes thought leadership, increased workforce diversity, as well as developing a greater openness to external knowledge sources.

New services come up with opportunities for organizations but the risk associated with these services always exists. Empirical studies, which have investigated the success factors at the project level, showed that success or failure is not the result of managing one or two activities very well; it is the result of a total approach, managing several aspects competently and in a balanced manner. It is therefore obvious that management is highly interested in learning about those factors that influence the success of new services. To address the challenge of high failure rate, a significant number of studies have focused on the factors that affect the performance of new services. However, the majority of new service development (NSD) research has concentrated on the financial service sector, but so far, there has been no important research on NSD in the largest industries worldwide, such as the hospitality industry, and in particular the hotel sector. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to gain insight into the criteria that contribute to the success in NSD projects in the hospitality economy. This study aims to explore the characteristics that distinguish between success and failure of new hotel services in Thailand. It thereby contributes to the improvement of success rates by allowing managers to refine their development processes for new services. Towards this end, the study investigates the potential of developing a predictive model that incorporates the unique characteristics of services and is demonstrated to distinguish effectively between successful and unsuccessful new hotel services.

The academic and business understanding of how Business Models through Service Logic co-creates, proposes, and captures value in extensive and complex Networked Systems is at its first daylight, specifically in the context of Service Systems with their Ecologies. With the complexity emerging in the Service Economies along with the advances in Information and Communication Technology such as the Cloud and Big Data, to describe and define the business operations, units, and value propositions consequently is done by business modeling and innovation of the company to acquire a current or new capitalization strategy, control and execution. Open Business Models such as the Business Model Canvas are easily integrated in existing or new Enterprises and Service Systems, and aim to facilitate the development of private as well as public entities in adapting, accessing, and integrating operant and operand resources by the ever-so-more used Service Logic.

A Service Business Model has the academia and business recognized Service-Dominant Logic (S-D Logic) as a foundation for sensemaking in complex Networked Systems and Service Economies. The authors have conducted 20 face-to-face interviews with private and public company managers at all levels, review of literature in the Business Model and Service Logic fields, and also reviewed case studies from IBM on Business Models and its Leadership, Strategy and Technology (and Services) – which is a natural extension of our Interdisciplinary and Systems Sciences studies with S-D Logic at Karlstad Business School and Karlstad University for the past four years. The author’s research, interviews and IBM’s case studies show a need for further conceptualization and sensemaking of the Value Co-Creations and Propositions in Service Eco-System settings – and also decision-making assistance for managers designing, innovating and using Service Business Models to create sustainable Ecologies.

Moreover, a Leadership perspective with a systems level strategy in Service Eco-Systems through externally-faced Value Propositions with the ability to create opportunities needs to be developed through a systems thinking. Furthermore, the quality of interaction, shared information, and influence in Dyad Perspective to facilitate Triad Relationships captures value – which is facilitated by the new Service Canvas Business Model. We argue for a multiple perspective in Service Business Models to cater both partner and customer perspective with internally- and externally-faced Value Propositions to Co-Create or Capture Value – we see that this requires an objective (objectification) foundation for consensus; the 4C model.

We contend that Service Eco-Systems cannot scale or sustain without the proper use of Technology specifically Communication but also Information, which determine most of the quality in modern and digital service interactions and perspectives. Our interviews, reviews, and cumulative research in Service Business Models and Eco-Systems with IBM case studies are all strong foundations for current and future research but also for business practice today.

In this paper we report on the operation and results of a pilot trial on the use of Science-Fiction Prototyping (SFP) as a means to motivate students to engage with STEM and language learning courses. In particular we describe two case studies. The first was conducted in Shijiazhuang University, China, and involved approximately 102 students following a course aimed at improving their English language abilities for computer science applications. The second case study concerned the use of micro science-fiction prototypes, in the form of Twitter-fiction, as a means of motivating pre-university students to take up STEM studies and careers. Finally, the paper concludes by describing future directions of this work

As digitalisation increasingly encompasses entire service ecosystems , it modifies resource integration patterns that connect ecosystem actors through strong and weak ties. To clarify how technological development contributes to this change, and how resource integration transforms the service ecosystem, this qualitative case study explores the digitalisation strategy of a market-leading systems integrator in the maritime industry. Based on 40 depth interviews with managers, the findings show how technology increasingly serves as a key operant resource in the transformation of resource integration patterns. The study contributes to ecosystem dynamics research by identifying major differences between the pre-digitalised and digitalised states of a service ecosystem, and demonstrates the dual role of technology in both increasing pattern complexity and facilitating coordination of that complexity. ARTICLE HISTORY

By examining the history of national and international in-service teacher education literature, policies, trends, and developments, this paper aims to highlight Turkish institutional and academic memories and the memory that has been lost. Adopting qualitative methodology through context and historical review approaches, policy documents, research articles, official newspapers and websites, and congress minutes were analyzed. The findings indicated that, in an international setting, in-service teacher training has been developed by establishing an understanding and creating memories through implementations, experiences and findings from research. On the other hand, in the Turkish setting in-service teacher training is influenced by changing regulations, personal bureaucratic decisions and fundamental reform movements, which fail to consider the research findings.

Recent changes in service environments have changed the preconditions of their production and consumption. These changes include unbundling services from production processes, growth of the information-rich economy and society, the search for creativity in service production and consumption and continuing growth of digital technologies. These contextual changes affect city governments because they provide a range of infrastructure and welfare services to citizens. Concepts such as ‘smart city’, ‘intelligent city’ and ‘knowledge city’ build new horizons for cities in undertaking their challenging service functions in an increasingly cost-conscious, competitive and environmentally oriented setting. What is essential in practically all of them is that they paint a picture of cities with smooth information processes, facilitation of creativity and innovativeness, and smart and sustainable solutions promoted through service platforms. This article discusses this topic, starting from the nature of services and the new service economy as the context of smart local public services. On this basis, we build an overall framework for understanding the basic forms and dimensions of smart public services. The focus is on conceptual systematisation of the key dimensions of smart services and the conceptual modelling of smart service platforms through which digital technology is increasingly embedded in social creativity. We provide examples of real-life smart service applications within the European context.

The goal of this research is to examine how social responsibility can augment the success of a business model innovation. This issue is explored through the construction and analysis of a number of narratives, representing each of the groups involved in a case company engaged in business model innovation and how their divergent perspectives are reconciled through the development and implementation of a strategy for social responsibility. Implications are offered about how social responsibility can influence positive changes to a firm’s business model, which in turn can result in improved firm performance.
Keywords: Business model innovation, social responsibility, narrative methodology.

The topic of servitization has generated a considerable body of research and many conferences, as well as industry engagement. Yet, despite the extensive literature associated with this now-mature discipline, there is no broad-based consensus on the core concepts and definitions deployed by servitization scholars, and both terminology and usage often seem ambiguous. This paper examines challenges related to service growth strategies, as well as strategies involving deservitization or a retreat from service offers. Showing that these strategies have been pursued for more than fifty years, clarification is sought here by framing the corresponding processes and proposing definitions for four core terms: servitization, service infusion, deservitization and service dilution. It becomes clear that in focusing on the organizational change entailed by these processes, future research must elucidate “softer” issues such as leadership and business logic.

This paper introduces the concept of online 'Innovations-Labs' (i-Labs) as location-independent collaborative ideation spaces. We highlight the challenges and opportunities that disruptive innovations present to companies and society, and discuss how Science Fiction Prototyping and Diegetic Innovation Templating can provide a means to explore that space by acting as ideation process and a language for capturing and communicating innovations. A core hypothesis of this paper is that there are significant gains to be accrued from integrating Virtual Reality, Science Fiction Prototyping, Diegetic Innovation Templating and Innovation Labs to form an online immersive reality innovation lab which both offers better affordances and access to people wishing to undertake innovation related activities. We present details of our initial implementation of an online innovation-lab (Our HEX) which takes the form of a virtual reality space-station. We then conclude the paper by describing future directions of our work, principally, a venture which uses 'Our HEX' space-station platform, plus a supporting textbook published by Tsinghua University Press, to teach 'English, Computing and Creativity' to Chinese students. Finally the paper concludes with a summary and reflections on our work to-date.