Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

PÉTER LITERATUR CSIZMADIA
importance. The main focus of innovation
research here was the creation rather than use
of new technologies. According to the authors,
this perspective has remained dominant until
today.
The second generation is labelled as the period
of assimilation. In this phase researchers tended
to examine service innovation using the
conceptual framework developed to understand
innovation in manufacturing. They assumed
that innovation shows universal patterns
that should exist both in manufacturing and
services.
The distinction approach in service innovation
appeared in the 1990s as a critique of the
assimilation period. Authors representing
this line of innovation research argued
that innovation in services differs from the
manufacturing sector. Researchers in this
period focused on organisational innovations
and the “soft” skills playing a dominant role
in knowledge-intensive business services, such
as management consultancy, and regarded the
role of “hard” technologies to be less dominant
in the innovation activities.
role of organisational innovations in shaping
the service innovation process.
The latest results of service innovation research
suggest that service innovations are highly
dependent on organisational practices and
represent and open and networked form of
innovation (Salter – Tether 2006). In addition,
in the case of service innovation the different
forms of innovation – product, process and
organisational – are more closely connected
than in manufacturing, which implies that the
economic value of service innovation heavily
relies on the combination of the different
forms of innovation (Hipp et al. 2000).
Finally, Gann and Salter (2000) identified
the following basic characteristics of service
innovations:
the role of highly skilled labour in
the creation and exploitation of new
solutions;
the importance of new organisational
practices in supporting the realisation of
new innovative opportunities;
The latest stream of service innovation research,
however, intents to synthesise the experiences
of the traditional innovation research as well
as the experiences stemming from a deeper
understanding of the special characteristics
of services. These researchers highlight the
complex and multidimensional character
of modern services and manufacturing and
focus on such issues as organisational change,
social networks and other, mainly institutional
mechanisms that support innovation in services.
In this approach special attention is paid to the
the cooperation between clients and
producers;
the key role of social networks in generating
and supporting knowledge
creation and exchange; and
Seite page 109
the ‘ad hoc’ or ‘informal’ organisational
form of most knowledge-intensive
service firms.