Innovation in services: A review of present findings and future pathways

The literature on the development of new services continues to grow but is still fragmented and varied. After searching for publications on "Service Innovation" and "New Service Development", we organize the literature into distinct research streams in order to illuminate the major arenas of debate. Starting with an outline of the evolution of this emerging research topic, we identify that studies either tend to focus on testing success factors for different service innovation types (service-product innovations, organizational innovations, etc.), or different degrees of radicalness (incremental vs. radical). Also, we identify that a distinct debate is focussed on the differences and similarities between product and service innovation but only few studies exist which offer comprehensive service-innovation frameworks. By so doing, we ascertain that the debate on success factors for different innovation types concentrated on studying new service-products but other types of service innovation such as organizational innovations have not yet become studied in depth. Further, differences in the drivers for radical or incremental innovations seem to be overrated and we identify contradictory results in the debate on differences versus similarities of product and service innovation. The review concludes by considering open questions, and emerging future pathways.