Books
- Bettencourt, Lance (2010): Service Innovation: How to Go from Customer Needs to Breakthrough Services. McGraw-Hill. (forthcoming)
- The secret of true service innovation is that you must shift the focus away from the service solution and back to the customer. Rather than asking, “How are we doing?” a company must ask, “How is the customer doing?” To achieve this shift in focus, companies must begin to think very differently about how customers define value based on the needs they are to satisfy. A proper understanding of these needs enables value to be understood in advance of any particular innovation being created.
- Boden, M. & Miles, I. (ed.) (2000): Services and the Knowledge Based Economy. London, Continuum.
- Leading researchers in the fields of services industries research and innovation studies investigate the reasons for the growth of the service sectors and the emergent 'knowledge economy'. Drawing on material as diverse as macroeconomic statistics and firm-level case studies, the contributors demonstrate that services are often important innovators in their own right, as well as contributing to innovation and economic performance in their user industries.
- Chesbrough H. (2006): Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology. Harvard Business School Press.
- Companies can no longer afford to rely entirely on their own ideas to advance their business, nor can they restrict their innovations to a single path to market. Therefore the traditional model for innovation is becoming obsolete. This path-breaking analysis is based on extensive field research, academic study, and the author's own long time experience working in Silicon Valley.
- Edvardsson, Gustafsson, Kristersson, Magnusson and Matthing (eds.) (2006). Involving customers in new service development. Imperial College Press. London.
- The book deals with how companies can involve customers or users in order to learn with them in the field of service-based business development. It presents a variety of customer-involvement approaches, methods for learning with customers, and the results of case studies conducted in both service and manufacturing companies focusing on value-creation through services.
- Based on research carried out by several research groups around the world, as well as on illustrative cases, the book creates new actionable knowledge regarding customer-involvement which will be useful for both practitioners and scholars.
- Gadrey J., Gallouj F.(edit.)(2002): Productivity, Innovation and Knowledge in Services: New Economic and Socio-economic Approaches. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.
- The book challenges some of the widespread assumptions that are commonly held about services and is particularly strong in highlighting the relationship between these assumptions and the limitations imposed by existing forms of measurement and conceptual frameworks. The collection provides an important stepping-stone in the developing service research agenda in the discipline of economics.
Gallouj F. and Djellal F. (edit.) (2010): The Handbook of Innovation and Services. Marston Book Services Ltd.- The Handbook expertly links the two major characteristics (innovation and services) in order to investigate the role of innovation in services, an issue that until now has been inadequately explored and one that poses many theoretical and operational challenges. This comprehensive volume encompasses the views of eminent scholars from a range of disciplines including economics, management, sociology and geography, and draws on a number of different analytical and methodological perspectives.
- Gallouj, F.(2002): Innovation in the Service Economy: The New Wealth of Nations. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.
- There is still considerable unwillingness to consider innovation in terms of services, a paradox rooted in an obsolete conception which regards manufacturing as the only engine of growth. The author propounds a theoretical framework which describes and evaluates the main approaches to analyzing and understanding innovation in services. He provides interesting and extensive empirical material on the nature and sources of innovation.
- Harrington James W. (Editor), Daniels Peter W. (Editor) (2006): Knowledge-based Services, Internationalization and Regional Development (The Dynamics of Economic Space) (The Dynamics of Economic Space)
In the book, an international and interdisciplinary team of leading scholars examines the attributes of knowledge acquisition and diffusion within and across service-providing organizations. Using a variety of case examples, they pay particular attention to the processes of internationalization and the ways in which service-providing organizations affect regional economic development.
- Miozzo M., Grimshaw D.(edit.) (2006): Knowledge Intensive Business Services: Organizational Forms And National Institutions. Edward Elgar Pub.
KIBS are active agents of divergence and there is no universal pattern of the nature and the evolution of KIBS, but national varieties. The book, which is strongly oriented towards both policy and theoretical questions, is a valuable addition to a body of literature. - Rubalcaba, L. and Kox, H. (edit) (2007): Business Services in European Economic Growth. Palgrave/Macmillan.
- Over the past twenty years the business services sector has contributed heavily to European economic growth in terms of employment, value added to products and innovation. However, many links between business services, their marketing function and their role in economic growth remain underexplored. This volume provides a comprehensive approach from an applied economics perspective. It has a clear focus on the contribution of business services to European economic growth, covering all the major mechanisms through which this contribution operates.
- Rubalcaba, L. (2007): The new service economy: Challenges and policy implications for Europe, UK and US: Edward Elgar.
- In this book the author contributes greatly to a better understanding of the service economy. By exploring the key dimensions, available empirical evidence and associated policy implications, Rubalcaba comprehensively investigates the new challenges facing the global economy, including employment, productivity, innovation and competitiveness. The case of the European services is highlighted, particularly in comparison to the US.
- Stauss B., Engelmann K., Anja Kremer A., Luhn A, (edit.) (2007): Services Science: Fundamentals, Challenges and Future Developments. Springer.
- The book includes detailed articles and short statements on service sector and service science, written by academics and experts. They explain which challenges need to be met by research and academic training in the services community of the 21st century.
