Managing Open Service Innovation

The following sections are included:

• About the Editors
• About the Contributors
• Contents

Two of the hottest topics in the area of innovation management in the last decade have been service innovation and open innovation. The two phenomena are often studied in isolation. It has, however, been suggested that service innovation processes are often characterized by more openness than closeness and that more research is needed to understand how organizations manage open service innovation activities in different contexts. This chapter develops a framework for the management of open service innovation. The framework consists of four distinct contexts within the area of open service innovation management: (1) the management of inbound open service innovation processes, (2) the management of outbound open service innovation processes, (3) the management of resources needed in inbound open service innovation processes, and (4) the management of resources needed in outbound open service innovation processes. The chapter also positions the remaining chapters of this book according to the framework and provides an overview of all chapters.

Over the last years, the phenomenon of open service innovation has gained an increasing amount of attention from researchers and practitioners. In this chapter, we take stock of the emerging literature on open service innovation and provide a systematic review of this literature. We identify and analyze 171 peer-reviewed articles published in 65 journals between 2003 and 2018. The analysis shows that the current literature has discussed topics such as co-creation, collaboration, absorptive capacity, crowdsourcing and citizen participation in relation to open service innovation. However, specific theoretical development related to open service innovation is scarce, and this constitutes a gap in the literature. We argue that continued empirical exploration of open service innovation is a viable research area and suggest that the development of an open-dominant logic framework, which follows along the same vein as service-dominant logic, could be valuable as a theoretical underpinning of future research.

Science by definition builds on previous knowledge and therefore the main goal of this study is to systematically evaluate the history and current status of the open service innovation (OSI) research by utilizing popularity-based and impact based scientometrics methods. The results grounded on ISI Web of Science (WoS), Scopus and Google Scholar data sources reveals that OSI research domain is still infancy and so far there are only handful authors and publications which have embraced the OSI term. However, the number of publications and authors focusing on open innovation (OI) in conjointly with services or service innovation (SI) is much greater. Albeit, there is a latent potential for OSI studies, but a need for a new OSI term remains questionable especially when interest towards OI and SI have recently leveled. A clear differences between WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar as a data source was identified. Therefore, the further studies focusing on innovation management execute triangulation in data source selection.

eHealth innovations promise to address the many challenges to the welfare system posed by demographic changes in the population, by connecting services from different organizations through collaborative online networks. Open innovation and co-creating with partners and healthcare users may boost such transformations, but there is has been a gap in literature on how Open innovation can be managed in a public sector healthcare setting; how it’s principles can help overcoming inertia, achieving functional fit and creating new values for healthcare users and benefits for the organization. Looking at literature on how network business models has been applied to healthcare, the authors elicit propositions for new eHealth solutions design, incorporation Open innovation principles.

As largely publicly run and funded institutions, universities are being pressured by their host governments to do more with fewer resources, and thus are being urged to innovate. Given their public character, universities are expected to adopt processes and practices that are transparent and socially accountable, which makes the integration of (open) knowledge from external sources a strategic imperative. That being said, little is yet known about how higher education institutions globally are resorting to open innovation to address increasingly complex technical and institutional environments. This paper contributes the growing literature on open innovation within services and addresses the existing knowledge gap by analysing the development of a virtual mobility master’s program at a leading research-intensive university based in the Nordic countries.

This chapter explores open innovation and explicit and emergent strategizing in Norwegian and foreign-based multinationals in the oil and gas service sectors. The chapter combines literature on open innovation and strategizing to shed light on mechanisms within firms regarding openness in innovation. Findings from 10 multinational companies demonstrate that company acquisition and location sourcing are explicit strategizing activities based at headquarters and expose inbound innovation in line with existing literature. Everyday practices on the periphery show that activities acquisition and knowledge sourcing are patterns of emergent strategizing that are performed locally and expose intra-bound innovation, nuancing existing open innovation categories. Our findings also nuance the understanding of strategizing from headquarters by demonstrating ambidexterity of both center and periphery. Strategizing is both centralized and dispersed and there are inbound and intra-bound innovation in use between the headquarters and the periphery that are initiated and evolve from both places, complementing each other. By combining research on strategy with open innovation, we expose center and periphery ambidexterity and provide open innovation research with an understanding of push and pull forces for intra-bound innovation.

Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs) are crucial contributors to national innovation systems, as they provide highly innovative services to European economies and societies. However, very few empirical studies have investigated how RTOs actually develop their service innovations. Thus, this paper explores the new service development (NSD) process of five renowned European RTOs. Our findings suggest that the NSD process in RTOs is ad hoc and highly iterative, and mostly informal. Moreover, this research highlights two additional noteworthy results: the NSD project vs. service innovation “culture” dilemma and the interesting open dimension of the RTOs’ NSD process.

The concept of open innovation was introduced by Henry Chesbrough in 2003 and refers to firms’ use of inflows and outflows of knowledge to improve innovation processes. The concept has received considerable scholarly attention, but most research has focused on how manufacturing firms can manage inflows of knowledge during their product innovation processes. How outflows of knowledge can be managed by service firms during their innovation processes has until now not received the same scholarly attention. In this chapter, we therefore aim to contribute in filling this knowledge gap by observing an innovation project in tourism during its implementation. The findings suggested that tourism firms reveal different types of knowledge to other tourism firms in non-pecuniary outbound open innovation processes. In this case the knowledge was revealed in joint workshops where several firms participated and in bi-lateral meetings between two firms, and sometimes the knowledge was transferred via consultants or researchers that acted as “knowledge mediators". The findings also suggested that tourism firms decided to reveal knowledge to other firms to improve their image, increase the market size and to sharpen up their own business. Implications for management as well as the need for further research are discussed in the chapter.

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.

This study explores digitalization in the healthcare sector, and presents insights on the use of data for developing and organizing preventive healthcare services for young people, which has been identified as one of the most crucial issues to be tackled by public decision-makers. Conducted as a qualitative case study with municipal decision-makers, this study highlights the needs and implications of data as a complex, systemic issue with far reaching long-term impact, where the right kind of data could improve the health and well-being of the society far beyond healthcare domain.

The following section is included:

• Index