Abstract
The notion of service ought to be embedded in the psyche of those responsi-ble for the design and delivery of service provision. Within an ever changing landscape, meeting customer expectations is a major priority for firms en-gaged in service provision. Enhancing the service experience lies in the con-text of innovation and entrepreneurship. The focus of innovation within business should take into consideration the unexpected, the nature of incon-gruities, process need and changes to structure. Innovation within service industries is widely recognised among researchers and practitioners as a key to gaining and sustaining competitive advantage. Increasingly, firms within service industries are placing new knowledge at the core of their strategies, especially knowledge about co-creation processes, knowledge of innovation and service design. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to explore the linkages between service development and co-creation processes to better understand the complexity of service innovation. The paper will first outline the notion of service and the context of service innovation. It will present a summarised view for management of service innovation. The paper will then move to illustrating how the creation and use of co-creation processes can be used to provide a shared understanding of what constitutes best practice.
Highlights
The purpose of this paper is to explore the linkages between service development and co-creation processes to better understand the complexity of service innovation
The significance and practical value of this paper is to provide a research narrative which defines the linkages between service development and co-creation processes to derive a better understanding of the complexity of service innovation and its application and implications for managers and academics in the future development and implementation of co-creation
At management level, is the company, directed towards developing a specific solution to a problem or attempting to develop a specific product? In the first case, this might be customer generated ideas on how to reduce queues, and in the second, a product that replaces a queue, that might be for example, a mobile phone app generated through co-creation activity
Summary
The work by Botten and McManus [5], and Howitt and McManus [6], highlights the complexity and competitive nature of services in different service sectors. Other authors [7] highlight complexity in services based on differential dimensions which incorporates service practice and performance. The predominance of traditional manufacturing and technological innovation has been partially responsible for the lack of published papers which argue the case of services sector innovation. Despite this recognition and interest in the topic, how innovation occurs and how it affects growth is poorly understood. Much of the literature on innovation concentrates on market-based innovation [12], leaving service innovation relatively unexplored
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