ABSTRACT

Innovation & Services: New Conceptual Frameworks

CRIC Discussion Paper No. 38

Dr Jeremy Howells

This paper seeks to question many of the assumptions behind the issue of services and the innovation process and seeks to redress the balance in terms of how services are viewed in relation to technological innovation. The analysis aims to highlight that services are becoming more important within the innovation process and also reviews some of the fundamental changes that are taking place within service innovation. This is not to deny that services still suffer from, and are bound by, many historical and institutional legacies which still shape and, more particularly, constrain their development. The review then goes on to challenge some of our conceptual preconceptions about the innovation process, and service activity within that process, suggesting that service-centred perspectives relating to consumption and technological innovation will become more central to the competitive advantage of firms and nations.

[View Paper] [Back to CRIC Papers]