Special Issue
Journal of Product Innovation Management:
“Contemporary Issues and Critical Challenges on Innovation in Services”
Guest Editors:
Aron O’Cass, The University of Tasmania
Martin Wetzels, Maastricht University
Submission due date: March 31, 2017
Motivation and Overview
In a recent article, Ostrom et al. (2015) identify ‘stimulating service innovation’ as the first of 12 service research priorities, commenting it is a strategic priority. The importance of service innovation is also evidenced by the fact that recently, the International Society of Service Innovation Professionals (See www.issip.org for more about ISSIP), was formed, with the goal of promoting education; professional development; and practice, research, and policy centered on service innovation. The complexity, scale, and rapidly changing nature of the service sector, coupled with a burgeoning global service research community, suggests a substantial opportunity and need to engage in the ongoing debate about service innovation and continue to identify and signal important service innovation topics worthy of research.
The rapidly evolving context of services presents a major challenge for innovation theory and practice as it becomes increasingly complex. In this area, critical factors have been noted and led to important directions for future research in service innovation becoming a constant refrain in the concluding sections of published research in top tier journals. One area being noted, and receiving a growing consensus is that competing in services relies on innovation, design, and creativity. A growing body of research demonstrates that service innovation, the development of new or enhanced services intended to benefit customers, solve customer problems is a major trigger of economic performance at both the organizational (Dotzel, Shankar, and Berry, 2013) and national levels (Gallouj, 2002). However, paradoxically, engaging in service innovation does not guarantee success. Service innovation is just as prone to failure as product innovation. According to many (e.g., Page and Schirr, 2008; Storey and Hughes, 2013), the market success of new services is comparable with that of new products. Interestingly, despite the growth in service innovation research in the last decade or so (Randhawa, Wilden and Hohberger, 2016), the jury is still out as to whether service firms are getting any better at innovation (Storey and Hughes, 2013; Storey et al 2015).
Increasingly service innovation has risen to prominence because of the growing role and significance of services in the economies of most countries. The global output of the service industry is around 40 trillion USD (accounting for around 2/3rds of the world output), providing employment for 1.4 billion people, which is slightly less than half of the world employment (Global Services Forum 2013). Further, over the past thirty years there has been substantial development and growth in areas such as industrial and professional services. For example, the professional service sector has developed into one of the strongest growing and most profitable sectors of the global economy (Empson et al., 2015). In 2013, the professional service sector generated revenue of US $2.5 trillion and employed around 18 million people (IBISWorld, 2014). Beyond the important contribution of Service Firms to wealth generation and employment, services are worth studying because of the insights they may generate for organizations who are attempting to accommodate themselves more in knowledge-based forms of business.
Specific Focus of the Special Issue
We expect that this special issue will result in seminal contributions to our understanding of service innovation management. Potential research topics for this special issue include the following. These topics are only intended to be thought provokers, and other areas and perspectives are encouraged.
- Challenges of Innovating in Services
- Innovating within complex service systems and value creation networks.
- Identifying drivers of sustained service innovation.
- Managing collaboration throughout the service innovation process and service supply chain.
- Innovating in services through crowdsourcing and open innovation.
- Understanding the roles and interrelationships in service-product and service-process innovation.
- The role of branding in fostering service innovation.
- The role of innovation in service supporting the suppliers’ product versus service supporting the clients actions.
- The role of customization in service design and delivery in service innovation.
- The bright and dark sides of service innovation.
- Service Innovation Questions
- What are the key characteristics of an ecosystem of service innovation in data-rich environments?
- How to evolve from goods-based companies to solution companies using big data to foster service innovation?
- How to foster service innovation via organizational leadership? Are there bright and dark side issues of leadership in service innovation?
- Can big data improve the chances of service innovation success?
- Collaboration and open Innovation Questions
- What is the role of internal and external collaboration in driving service innovation collaborations?
- How do firms foster innovation in service supply chains?
- Is Open Innovation beneficial to service innovation?
- Is “crowdsourcing” still too narrowly-bounded to yield advantages for service innovations?
- What is the effect of crowdsourcing on innovation management of NSD?
- What are the dark and bight sides of collaborative service innovation?
Review Process and Timeline
- Call for papers announcement: May 30, 2016
- Submission due date: March 31, 2017
- First round decisions: July 1, 2017
- Revision due date: December 1, 2017
- Second round decisions: March 1, 2018
- Final editorial decision April 15, , 2018
Submission Process
Submissions to the special issue should be sent electronically through the JPIM ScholarOne system (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jpim). Authors need to clearly indicate in their submission information and letter that their manuscript is for the Special Issue on “Contemporary Issues and Critical Challenges on Innovation in Services.” All submissions will be subject to a double blind review process followed by JPIM. All manuscripts must be original, unpublished works that are not concurrently under review for publication elsewhere. All submissions should conform to the JPIM manuscript submission guidelines available at: http://tinyurl.com/mn3g6lb. Questions about this special issue may be directed to either of the guest editors at: aron.ocass@utas.edu.au or m.wetzels@maastrichtuniversity.nl
References
Dotzel, T, Shankar, V and Berry, L. 2013. Service innovativeness and firm value. Journal of Marketing Research 50 (2): 259–76.
Gallouj, F. 2002. Innovation in the service economy: The new wealth of nations. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Global Services Forum (2013) http://unctad.org/en/conferences/gsf/2013/Pages/home.aspx
Empson, L, Muzio, D, Broschak, J and Hinings, B. 2015. The Oxford Handbook of Professional Service Firms. Edited by Oxford University Press, Oxford.
IBISWorld, 2014. http://www.ibisworld.com/industry/global/global-accounting-services.html
Ostrom, A, Parasuraman, A, Bowen, D, Patricio, L and Voss, C. 2015. Service Research Priorities in a Rapidly Changing Context, Journal of Service Research,18 (2), 127-159.
Page, A. L., and G. R. Schirr. 2008. Growth and development of a body of knowledge: 16 years of new product development research, 1989– 2004. Journal of Product Innovation Management 25 (3): 233–48.
Randhawa, K, Wilden, R and Hohberger, J. 2016. A Bibliometric Review of Open Innovation: Setting a Research Agenda, Journal of Product Innovation Management, DOI: 10.1111/jpim.12312.
Storey, C., and M. Hughes. 2013. The relative impact of culture, strategic orientation and capability on new service development performance. European Journal of Marketing 47 (5/6): 833–56.
Storey, C, Cankurtaran, P, Papastathopoulou, P and Hultink, E. 2015. Success Factors for Service Innovation: A Meta-Analysis, Journal of Product Innovation Management, DOI: 10.1111/jpim.12307
