Toward a Contextually Anchored Service Innovation Typology

Abstract

ABSTRACT In an increasingly service‐centered economy, service innovation is crucial to maintaining a firm's competitive advantage. While service innovation has attracted much attention and has resulted in the development of several service innovation typologies, these attempts remain rooted in the goods‐versus‐services perspective. In addition, limited attention has been devoted to theoretically anchoring these typologies in the key determinants of service innovation. Our study aims to close these gaps by developing a service innovation typology that is embedded in the service‐dominant logic (SDL) and anchored by contextually relevant dimensions—environmental uncertainty, strategic orientation, and market orientation. This article presents an eight‐cell service innovation typology and discusses its managerial and research implications. It is our belief that framing the typology along three contextually important dimensions and embedding in the SDL provides a richer and more appropriately specified articulation that is theoretically robust and will be useful to managers responsible for service innovation.