Services – Defining Service Innovation

Service innovation is seen as a catalyst for growth in activities in the tertiary sector, as well as in the primary and secondary sectors. Service innovation can cover a wide variety of forms: social innovation, organizational innovation, methodological innovation, marketing innovation, innovation in external relations, intangible process innovation, and intangible product innovation. This chapter focuses on the specificities of services, and their consequences on innovation and innovation processes, and presents the main definitions of service innovation. The service is a social construction that produces different effects over time and in varying degrees of materiality. The literature on service innovation emphasizes the interactivity of innovation processes and the fact that the service delivery process and the innovation process are sometimes confused. A synthesis of research on innovation in services can be represented by the pendulum of assimilation, demarcation and integration.