A New Conceptualization of Service Innovation Grounded in S-D Logic and Service Systems (New)

Bo Edvardsson, Karlstad University, Sweden
Bård Tronvoll, Hedmark University College, Norway

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to conceptualize service innovation through a service-dominant logic (S-D logic) lens and a service system foundation.

Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual paper offers a service-dominant logic lens and a structuration theory approach emphasizing an actor perspective on service innovation. Since the value of innovation unfolds in practice, this paper will use customer to denote the key actor in co-creating value in context.

Findings – The paper shows how a resource constellation in a service system is reconfigured and thus explains service innovation from the lens of S-D logic, emphasizing customers’ value co-creation of value in practices. The focus is on the interdependencies between the configuration of resources in a service system and schemas that shape customers and other actors when integrating resources and co-creating value.

Research limitations/implications – There is a need to discuss service innovation in a social constructivist view to better understand the guiding principles or schemas that enable actors to co-create value.

Originality/value – Service innovation is understood as sourced by changes in either resources or schemas (norms and rules) or a combination, resulting in structural changes in a service system. The conceptualization provides: a new definition of service innovation; a new framework describing the interdependency between changes in resources and schemas as a basis for an innovative configuration or reconfiguration of a service system; and three propositions illustrating the relevance of this new framework.

 

Edvardsson, B., Tronvoll, B. 2013, A new conceptualization of service innovation grounded in S-D logic and service systems, International Journal of Quality and Service Sciences, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 19-31.