Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
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PÉTER LITERATUR CSIZMADIA<br />
importance. The main focus of innovation<br />
research here was the creation rather than use<br />
of new technologies. According to the authors,<br />
this perspective has remained dominant until<br />
today.<br />
The second generation is labelled as the period<br />
of assimilation. In this phase researchers tended<br />
to examine service innovation using the<br />
conceptual framework developed to understand<br />
innovation in manufacturing. They assumed<br />
that innovation shows universal patterns<br />
that should exist both in manufacturing and<br />
services.<br />
The distinction approach in service innovation<br />
appeared in the 1990s as a critique of the<br />
assimilation period. Authors representing<br />
this line of innovation research argued<br />
that innovation in services differs from the<br />
manufacturing sector. Researchers in this<br />
period focused on organisational innovations<br />
and the “soft” skills playing a dominant role<br />
in knowledge-intensive business services, such<br />
as management consultancy, and regarded the<br />
role of “hard” technologies to be less dominant<br />
in the innovation activities.<br />
role of organisational innovations in shaping<br />
the service innovation process.<br />
The latest results of service innovation research<br />
suggest that service innovations are highly<br />
dependent on organisational practices and<br />
represent and open and networked form of<br />
innovation (Salter – Tether 2006). In addition,<br />
in the case of service innovation the different<br />
forms of innovation – product, process and<br />
organisational – are more closely connected<br />
than in manufacturing, which implies that the<br />
economic value of service innovation heavily<br />
relies on the combination of the different<br />
forms of innovation (Hipp et al. 2000).<br />
Finally, Gann and Salter (2000) identified<br />
the following basic characteristics of service<br />
innovations:<br />
<br />
<br />
the role of highly skilled labour in<br />
the creation and exploitation of new<br />
solutions;<br />
the importance of new organisational<br />
practices in supporting the realisation of<br />
new innovative opportunities;<br />
The latest stream of service innovation research,<br />
however, intents to synthesise the experiences<br />
of the traditional innovation research as well<br />
as the experiences stemming from a deeper<br />
understanding of the special characteristics<br />
of services. These researchers highlight the<br />
complex and multidimensional character<br />
of modern services and manufacturing and<br />
focus on such issues as organisational change,<br />
social networks and other, mainly institutional<br />
mechanisms that support innovation in services.<br />
In this approach special attention is paid to the<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
the cooperation between clients and<br />
producers;<br />
the key role of social networks in generating<br />
and supporting knowledge<br />
creation and exchange; and<br />
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the ‘ad hoc’ or ‘informal’ organisational<br />
form of most knowledge-intensive<br />
service firms.