Co-Creation in a Service Innovation Context

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In the recent past, research on innovation was primarily concerned with processes which were initiated, executed and managed by the provider themselves. Unique skills were developed internally by the organizations and kept secret from the market until launch (Chesbrough 2003). More recently, organizations have realized the importance of collaborating with other actors to advance their capabilities and innovation competencies (Camarinha-Matos 2009; Chen, Tsou and Ching 2011). Current approaches to innovation embrace a multi-actor approach and a paradigm shift has occurred from closed innovation to collaborative and open innovation (Greer and Lei 2012). Aligned with Prahalad and Ramaswamy’s (2000) concept of ‘co-creation’, scholars have started to examine the collaborative role of customers in innovation. While there has been a focus in past on integrating lead users into the innovation process (e.g. von Hippel 1986; Herstatt and von Hippel 1992), more research is needed on general customer innovation and community innovation contributions, particularly in a service context. Attention has accordingly shifted from the tangible aspects of product innovation to the co-produced innovation process and the co-created value between an organization and its customers. Understanding how this notion can be harnessed for the purposes of innovating service and service solutions, is a current managerial and academic challenge (Ordanini and Parasuraman 2011). This paper addresses calls for a greater understanding of the involvement of customers in service innovation and argues for collaborative behaviors to drive service innovation performance. The specific behaviors exhibited by customers in this process will be investigated by way of the proposed co-creation construct and its behavioral manifestations (Yi and Gong 2012).