Innovation in services: theoretical issues

This report consists of six independent papers given over to different theoretical issues regarding innovation in services. All these papers were written as part of the TSER-SI4S project. They are either based upon empirical materials gathered during the project or they feed it with theoretical background and literature survey. The first paper (« Innovation in services and the attendant myths ») raises the following question: « is service innovation special? ». It looks into the nature and the origin of different old or new myths concerning services and innovation in services (the myth of the residual sector, the myths of low productivity and low capital intensity, the myth of the servant society, the myth of lack of innovation, etc.). The second paper (« Neo-schumpeterian perspectives for innovation in services: a survey » with Camal Gallouj) and the third one (« Beyond technological innovation : trajectories and varieties of services innovation ») are devoted to a survey of the literature on innovation in services. Paper 2 examines services from the perspectives of neo-Schumpeterian theories of innovation. Its goal is to look to what extent neo-Schumpeterian analyses help take into account innovation in services. Paper 3 aims at displaying the variety of forms and trajectories of innovation in services, beyond technological innovation. It classifies the attendant literature into two categories: - service-oriented analyses, focusing on service specificities; - integrated approaches aiming at designing analyses and theories of innovation suitable for both goods and services. The three other papers are given over to the deepening of certain theoretical issues raised previously. The fourth paper (« Innovating in reverse: services and the reverse product cycle ») proposes an assessment of Barras' model both at a theoretical level and on the basis of the empirical materials gathered during the SI4S project. The goal of the fifth paper (« Innovation as a loosely coupled system in services » with Jon Sundbo) is to assess whether innovation in services can be described as a steady and coherent system. It displays and analyses different models of innovation organisation in services. The last paper (« Innovation in services », with Olivier Weinstein) aims at laying the foundations of a theory of innovation in services on the basis of the definition of the product or service as a system of characteristics.