What are service sector innovations and how do we measure them?

Services dominate all advanced economies but service innovations are still an underresearched topic. One of the reasons are definitional and measurement difficulties. The goal of the paper is to highlight those by reviewing recent literature and to assess the current state of knowledge and challenges. Theoretical approaches, empirical techniques and selected empirical results are discussed. Apparently the biggest challenge, at this point, is to create a unified conceptual framework, that would encompass both manufacturing ad services. Meeting this challenge will, however, be difficult, given the strong focus on manufacturing, both in the literature and in the way enterprise surveys are designed.innovation, services, manufacturing

Innovation Strategies and Productivity in the Polish Services Sector in the light of CIS 2008

Industry - and firm-level research into both innovations and productivity has long been limited to manufacturing. With this paper, we aim to contribute to the stream of literature that aims at extending the scope of such investigations to the services industry. To this end we analyze the innovation strategies in several service sectors in Poland in 2008 and examine their relationship to productivity. Our results show that service firms differ considerably in their innovation strategies, but that most of those strategies lead to productivity gains

How Important are Knowledge Intensive Business Services for Innovation? A Brief Discussion Based on the Spanish Case

This paper aims at discussing the importance of knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) for innovation based on the Spanish case. Our findings point to an active role of these activities as innovators, showing similar levels than medium or even high-tech manufacturing. Nevertheless, we do not find support to affirm that KIBS play an outstanding role as knowledge carriers and bridges for innovation, as usually emphasised by the literature. On the contrary, universities and technological centres are seen as much more active partners and sources for innovation by Spanish companies. The latter suggests that in the Spanish innovation system there is a well differentiated role of KIBS and the public knowledge infrastructure formed by universities, research and large part of the technological centres

Innovation, tourism and social networks

Innovation is an important source of competitive advantage, being a key research topic. Some authors consider that tourism entrepreneurs typically show scarce business skills and limited innovativeness. Many studies additionally conclude that accommodation businesses are not particularly innovative. This study intends to demonstrate the opposite. Tourism enterprises rarely have research and development (R&D) departments or resources dedicated to systematically enhance innovation. However, the research and knowledge acquisition process takes place in a complex and informal way. Therefore, beyond presenting and classifying some examples of innovation in tourism, this research aims to highlight the role played by social networks as a source of knowledge acquisition, and specifically online reviews as an important basis for innovation of tourism businesses

The illusions of competition in the water sector: a response to the OFWAT/Cave consultations on introducing competition in the water sector in England and Wales

The paper provides a critical review of the role of liberalisation and competition in the water sector, based on empirical evidence from the UK and internationally. The paper is submitted as evidence to the official reviews of competition in water sector in England and Wales

On the Determinants of the Reach of Innovation-related Collaboration in Small Firms

This paper takes as its starting point an item of relatively recent academic orthodoxy: the insistence that ‘…interactive learning and collective entrepreneurship are fundamental to the process of innovation’ (Lundvall, 1992, p. 9). From this, academics have frequently taken “interactive” to imply “inter-organisational” and, whilst one might be concerned by this too casual conflation, there is a growing consensus that firms’ embeddedness in collaborative networks matters for their innovative performance (Gilsing et al., 2008).

Contribution of Adversity Quotient, Self Awareness and Demographic Factors to Student Career Maturity

One of the purposes of vocational school (SMK) is as an education facility to prepare alumni who are ready to enter work field, but in contrary the highest number of unemployed in West Sumatra is dominated by SMK alumni. This research aims to describe the contribution of adversity quotient, self awareness and demographic factors to student career maturity. The study was conducted using quantitative descriptive methods. The research population were students of class XII at SMKN6 Padang as many as 392 students and a sample of research were 198 students. The technique used in this research waspurposive sampling technique. The instrument used was a adversity quotient, self awareness and career maturity scale was using Likert model, and the research data was analyzed using simple regression and multiple regression with dummy variables. The research findings prove that: (1) adversity quotient has an effective contribution of 23% to student career maturity, (2) self awareness contributing as much as 37.9% to career maturity, (3) gender does not contribute to career maturity,(4) socioeconomic status contributes 4.9% to student career maturity, and (6) there were 47.8% of contributions together with adversity quotient, self awareness, gender and socioeconomic status on students' career maturity. This result show that student’s career maturity was not influenced by one variable only but adversity quotient, self awareness and demographic factor all together contribute in forming student’s career maturity. Therefore, increase in career maturity as an attempt to prepare students prior to entering work field could be done by optimizing adversity quotient level and self awareness while also considering demographic factor of each students

Does social software support service innovation?

Recent Internet technologies and web-based applications, such as social software, are being increasingly applied in firms. Social software can be employed for knowledge management and for external communication enabling access to internal and external knowledge. Knowledge in turn constitutes one of the main inputs to service innovation. Hence, social software has the potential to support service innovation. Using data from 505 German Information- and Communication Technology (ICT) and knowledge-intensive service firms, this is the first paper which empirically analyses the question whether the use of social software applications triggers innovation. Thereby, it refers to a knowledge production function in which social software use constitutes the knowledge sourcing activity. The results reveal that there is a positive relationship between social software and service innovation. Since this result is robust when controlling for former innovative activities and the previous propensity to adopt new technologies and to change processes, the analysis suggests that the causality runs from social software to innovation. --Social software,web 2.0,service innovation,knowledge management

Customer Involvement in Service Innovation in Banking Sector of Pakistan

Customer involvement in service innovation has a positive impact on the performance and growth of banking sector. Prior studies recognize only importance of customer involvement in service innovation. Yet the researchers have not explored the relationship between technology advancement and customer involvement. The process of customer involvement in service innovation with mediating effect of technology is investigated by conducting quantitative research in banking sector of Pakistan. Data was collected by standard questionnaire. For data analysis, correlation coefficient was used through IBM SPSS Amos Software. The findings suggest that there is significant relationship between technology, customer involvement and service innovation.  Keywords: Customer involvement, service innovation, technology, quantitative stud