Opening Up the Service Innovation Process Towards Ordinary Employees in Large Service Firms

Abstract

Most research on how the intellectual resources needed to succeed with innovation are managed has focused on the management of external intellectual resources in open innovation processes, whereas the management of the intellectual resources that ordinary employees possess has not received the same attention. This chapter addresses this literature gap by exploring employee involvement in service innovation processes qualitatively. This is done by following and observing the implementation of a project aiming to increase a large service firm’s innovativeness through higher and more focused employee involvement. Our findings suggest that successful implementation of employee involvement in this context is associated with the support of managers at all levels, the establishment of arenas where employees can collaborate, the establishment of a transparent system for screening and selection of ideas, and the existence of professional innovation management employees that are able to facilitate and lead the development of ideas.