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  1. International Journal of Services Technology and Management (IJSTM), Volume 10 - Issue 2/3/4 – 2008, Special Issue on Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) Special Issue on Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS).  Guest Editors: Associate Professor David Doloreux, Associate Professor Mark Freel and Professor Emmanuel Muller-
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  4. Evanschitzky H., Ahlert D., Blaich G., Kenning P. (2007). Knowledge management in knowledge-intensive service networks: A strategic management approach. The Journal of Management History. Volume 45, Issue 2, Pages 265-283, 2007.  
    The main purpose of this paper is to analyze knowledge management in service networks. It analyzes the knowledge management process and identifies related challenges. The paper explores the literature on the topic of knowledge management as well as the resource (or knowledge) based view of the firm. It offers conceptual insights and provides possible solutions for knowledge management problems


  5. Toivonen M., Tuominen T. (2007). Emergence of innovations in Services. 2009. Service Industries Journal, Vol. 29, No.1. (forthcoming)
    Along with the ’servicisation’ of society, innovation in services has become a topical issue. The paper aims to contribute to this discussion through a theoretical analysis supplemented with findings from two empirical case studies. The theories examined are multi-disciplinary including general service theories, general innovation theories and theories linked to new service development and innovation management.


  6. Wood, P. (2006). The regional significance of knowledge-intensive services in Europe. Innovation. The European Journal of Social Sciences. Volume 19, Number 1, March 2006, pp. 51-66(16)
    The article reviews the work of the 'Knowledge-intensive Services and Innovation' (KISINN) Network, which examined the regional incidence of 'knowledge-intensive business services' (KIBS) across eight European countries in 1996/97. There still seems to be little recognition at this scale that innovation is fundamentally a service-based process. KIBS growth is also generally regarded as economically marginal, rather than as a key component of the corporate-dominated nexus of expertise exchange which now drives regional economic inequality.


  7. Toivonen M., Smedlund A., Tuominen T. (2006). Development of Knowledge Intensive Business Service Innovations and Innovation Networks. International Journal MANAGEMENT, Journal for Management Theory and Practice, Faculty of Organizational Sciences, Belgrade, Vol. 40, pp.4-11.
    The paper describes the plan and early stages of a study KIBSINET, which examines KIBS’ innovation activities at the firm level, at the level of individual innovation processes and at the network level. The firm level analysis focuses on those mechanisms in which KIBS stimulate and channel their innovativeness.
     
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  9. Lusch, Vargo S. & O’Brien (2007). Competing through service: insights from service-dominant logic. Journal of Retailing, Vol. 83, No 1, pp. 5 -18.
  10. Business scholars and practitioners are aware that competitive advantage can be enhanced through service. It is also clear that there is a link between competitive advantage and superior performance. Yet, by almost any definition or measure, there is little evidence of significantly increasing service. In fact, it is often argued that service is actually on decline, at least in the U.S. marketplace.
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  13. Toivonen M. (2006). Future Prospects of Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) and Implications to Regional Economies. ICFAI Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 4, No 3.
    Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) have aroused much interest during recent years due to their role as central actors in innovation systems. The article discusses the future prospects of KIBS on the basis of the analysis of driving forces and trends. Three driving forces characteristic of today's society seem especially relevant from the viewpoint of KIBS: the development of information and communication technologies, the globalization of the economy and the generalization of network-based business models.
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  15. Kox H. & Lejour A. (2006). The Effects of the Services Directive on Intra-Eu Trade and FDI.
  16. International policy heterogeneity creates trade and investment costs for service firms doing business in other countries. Service providers have to comply with different rules in each foreign market where they operate. Complying with these regulations causes fixed market-entry costs, specific for each export market. The authors have found a robust and strong negative impact of policy heterogeneity costs on services trade and FDI.
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  19. Leiponen A.(2006). Managing knowledge for innovation: the case of business-to-business services. Journal of Product Innovation Management, Vol. 23, pp. 238 -258.
  20. Leiponen examines the effects of knowledge on innovation performance. A conceptual framework of knowledge assets with degrees of tacitness and collectiveness as principal axes is developed. The results show that both improvements and new introductions of business services are significantly associated with collectively held knowledge - i.e. codified service solutions or team-based competences and procedures. Relying solely on tacit knowledge held by individuals might in contrast hamper innovation. The results also show that tacit collective knowledge is more closely associated with new service introductions (innovations), whereas explicit collective knowledge is associated with service improvements.
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  23. Kristensson P., Matthing J. and Johansson N. (2008). Key strategies for the successful involvement of customers in the co-creation of new technology-based services. International Journal of Service Industry Management, Vol. 19 No.4, pp. 474 -491.
  24. Kristensson et al. discuss and identify seven key strategies required for successful involvement of customers in the co-creation on new technology-based services.
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  27. Björlin Lidén S. & Sandén B. (2004). The role of service guarantees in service development. Service Industries Journal, Vol. 24.No. 4, pp. 1 -20.
  28. The authors present an empirical description of how service guarantees may support service development by systematizing customer involvement after service failures. The results show that in 9 put of 41 situations, the invoking of a guarantee led to service development.
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  31. Abramovici M. & Bancel-Charensol L. (2004). How to take customers into consideration in service innovation projects. Service Industries Journal, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 56 -78.
  32. Abramovici & Bancel-Charensol investigate how service firms can take customers into consideration in service innovation projects. Specific emphasis is put on the validation stage of the innovation project cycle, in which the goal is to validate the chosen technical option through the construction and testing of a prototype. Here the customer can take a partial role in the evaluation. In service innovation the customer’s validation appears to be more complex than the validation of goods innovation.
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  35. Czarnitzki D. & Spielkamp A. (2003). Business services in Germany: bridges for innovation. Service Industries Journal, Vol. 23 No. 2, pp. 1 -30.
  36. Czarnitzki & Spielkamp examine the role of business services in building bridges for innovation in both the manufacturing and service sectors. The empirical context is business services in Germany. A distinction is made between ordinary standard business services and qualified knowledge-based or knowledge-intensive business services. Specifically the second category is of specific focus in the article. A sound innovation capacity, in particular knowledge, creativity, market and management skills, is a necessary precondition to become a bridge for innovation, the authors claim. They conclude that business services have sufficient innovation potential which makes them good candidates for building bridges for innovation for other firms. The role of business services in an innovation system is thus that of a distributor of knowledge and a transfer agent.
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  39. den Hertog P. (2000). Knowledge intensive business services as co-producers of innovation. International Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 4 No. 4, pp. 491 -528.
  40. den Hertog explores what role knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) play in innovation in other firms. KIBS are seen to function as facilitator, carrier or source of innovation in client firms. Through their symbioticlike relationship with client firms some KIBS function as co-producers of innovation. Specifically process-oriented and intangible forms of knowledge flows are crucial in such relationships.
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  43. Blindenbach -Driessen F. & van den Ende J. (2006). Innovation in project-based firms: the context dependency of success factors. Research Policy, Vol.35, pp. 545 -561.
  44. The authors have investigated to which extent success factors from the new product and new service development literature can be applied to development projects in project-based service firms. Project-based firms are described as firms, such as engineering and construction, consulting or system integration, which solely execute projects for clients. They found that, although success factors frequently mentioned in the literature can also apply to some extent to project-based firms, remarkable discrepancies existed.
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  47. Alam I. (2006a). Service innovation strategy and process: a cross-national comparative analysis. International Marketing Review, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 234 -254.
  48. Only limited attention has been paid to the issue of new service development (NSD) in a cross-national context. To address this critique of the literature a comparative cross-national study of NSD strategy and process of financial service firms in Australia and the USA was conducted. The study employs a cross-sectional, survey-based methodology. The US sampling frame included 274 large financial service firms situated in the Northeast region of the USA. The Australian sampling frame consisted of 262 firms situated in the Southeast region of Australia. The findings suggest that new-to-company services, as low cost and less risky option of developing moderately innovative services, is the most popular strategy choice for both Us and Australian firms - even though it has been assumed that highly innovative “new-to-the-world” services may be the best option for a firm.
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  51. Alam I. (2006b). Removing the fuzzyness from the fuzzy front-end of service innovations through customer interaction. Industrial marketing management, Vol. 35, pp. 468 -480.
  52. Alam examines the role of customer interaction in what is called “the fuzzy front-end” of service innovation – i.e. the initial stages of idea generation, idea screening and concept development in new service development. The findings suggest that the fuzzy front-end can be much less fuzzy if customers are involved in the front-end stages of new service development.
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  55. Hipp C., Thether B. S., and Miles I. (2000) The incidence and effects of innovation in services: evidence from Germany. International Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 4 No 4, pp. 417 -453.
  56. Hipp et al. present evidence from a large-scale survey of innovation. The empirical setting is German commercial service firms. They show that service firms are much more active with respect to innovation than was widely thought. The service firms included in the study were found to be most active in service innovation and process innovation but less active in organizational innovation. Suppliers of highly standardized services were further found to have lower tendency to innovate than suppliers of more customized services.
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  59. Froehle & Roth (2007). A resource-process framework of new service development. Production & Operations Management, Vol. 16 No 2, pp. 169 -188.
  60. Froehle & Roth develop a theoretical framework that integrates process and resource orientated perspectives on new service development and in which the investment in key resources for innovation – intellectual, organizational, physical – are interlinked with different stages of the innovation process (design stage, analysis stage, development stage, launch stage).
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  63. Cainelli, Evangelista & Savona (2004). The impact of innovation on economic performance in services. Service Industries Journal, Vol. 24 No 1, pp. 116 -130.
  64. Cainelli et al. explore the relationship between innovation and economic performance in services. The results show that innovating firms out-perform non-innovating firms in terms of productivity levels and economic growth. Productivity is also found to be linked to the amount of innovation expenditure, especially expenditures on new software.
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  67. Miles I. (2000). Service innovation: coming to age in the knowledge-based economy. International Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 4 No 4, pp. 371 -389.
  68. This collection of essays demonstrates that research on services innovation is now a vibrant and mature field within innovation studies. Examining the development of this field, and the contributions of these essays in particular, Miles argues that the time is right for a "marriage" between the study of services innovation and mainstream innovation studies. While there is a great deal to be learned from the study of services innovation, treating this as a separate area of study runs the risk that important lessons for the study of innovation within manufacturing and other sectors may be lost. These essays point the way toward more integrated approaches, which are particularly suitable for studying innovation processes in the knowledge-based economy.
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  71. Verganti R. & Buganza, T. (2005). Design inertia: designing for life-cycle flexibility in internet-based services. Journal of Product, Vol. 22, pp. 223 -237.
  72. Verganti and Buganza investigate design inertia when facing the need for continuous redesign and innovation in services. They also identify five possible inertia factors that may influence service life-cycle flexibility.
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  75. Vargo S. (2008). Customer Integration and Value Creation: Paradigmatic Traps and Perspectives. Journal of Service Research, Vol. 11 No 2, pp. 211-215
  76. The commentary uses the Customer Integration—Facilities, Transformation, Use (CI-FTU) framework of Moeller as a platform for discussing two nested challenges in the development of service-dominant (S-D) logic. The first is the potency of the traditional, goods-dominant (G-D) logic paradigm, including the pitfalls of using its lexicon for describing a transcending logic. The second is the related need to develop a broader perspective for understanding value creation than is apparent in traditional conceptualizations or in the CI-FTU conceptualization. In addition, the challenge of isolating S-D logic in its rapid evolution beyond G-D logic is discussed.
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  79. Oke A. (2007). Innovation types and innovation management practices in service companies. International Journal of Operations and Production Management, Vol. 27 No 6, pp. 564 -587.
  80. Oke investigates management practices in different types of innovation in the UK service sector. The findings show that product innovations are emphasized more in telecommunications and financial sectors while service innovation are emphasized more in retail and transport sectors. The results also suggest that formal management practices supporting innovation – innovation strategy, creativity and idea management, human resource management, selection and portfolio management and implementation – tend to be biased toward the development of radical innovations on the expense of incremental innovation.

 

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