Creativity for service innovation: a practice-based perspective

Abstract

Purpose – The success of service innovation is largely dependent on creativity. So far, however, the question of how to reinforce creativity in the development of innovative services, while being an important managerial issue, has not attracted much attention from the academics. The purpose of this paper is to fill in this gap, by studying what constitutes capabilities for reinforcing creativity in service innovation, from a practice-based perspective. Design/methodology/approach – Through the theoretical lens of the resource-based view we set out to conduct three case studies in highly service-innovative European research and technology organisations (RTOs). Through 24 interviews and analysis of secondary sources, we collect our data, which are then analysed from a multi-case perspective, in order to gain understanding on the resource-related practices and resulting capabilities for reinforcing creativity in service innovation. Findings – By studying the resource-related practices of reinforcing creativi...