Protecting Service Innovations against Imitation The Case of Mobile TV

During recent years, the importance of service innovations has increased notably. However, profiting from them can be quite challenging. It is not only a question of pricing and marketing the services appropriately, but also about keeping competitors from imitating them. In this study protecting service innovations against imitation are discussed in relation to the case of Finnish mobile TV. The aim is to examine how service innovation differs from other types of innovation in terms of protection, and how this shows in collaborative innovation activities. Our results indicate that characteristics that separate service innovations from product or process innovations may notably influence efficacy of protection. Furthermore, as creation of service innovations often includes collaborative activities, there is yet another twist to protection issues: On the one hand, companies should protect their knowledge in order to secure their positions. On the other hand, they need to foster knowledge sharing, which may be in conflict with protective measures.