Innovation in services: Design and management

Development in technologies, economic institutions, demographics and globalization drive the scale, complexity and interdependence of todayʹs service systems. Ideas of services are not new but the rapid increase in economic significance and the greatly accelerated rates of change mean that understanding and improving service systems in a sustainable way have become a major challenge. From a statistical perspective, modern economies primarily comprised services. Innovation is one of the five drivers of productivity growth alongside skills, investment, enterprise and competition. Firms do not consider themselves to be ʹservicesʹ or ʹmanufacturingʹ units, but providers of solutions (that involve a combination of products and services) for customers. Improving understanding of services innovation complements the better-established knowledge of manufacturing innovation. The paper tries to develop an understanding of the change in innovation in services from technological adoption to complex complementary changes in technologies, skills and organization. An attempt has been made to look at the managerial perspective of services innovation and the infrastructural setup needed for an optimal system.