Ecosystem thinking within service innovations – which capabilities are important
In recent decades, it has become clear that organizations must innovate, adapt and reinvent faster at the risk of extinction. This is attributed to the increasingly dynamic economic environment driven by technological innovation, customer drive, globalization, and competition (Basole, 2019; Teece, 2007; 2017, p. 482; Teece, Peteraf & Leih, 2016; Vargo & Lusch, 2004). Witness to this is the dramatic decline in the average expected lifespan of an S&P 500 company; from an average of 33 years in 1964 to 24 years in 2016 and expected to reach 12 years in 2027 (Anthony, Viguerie, Schwartz & Van Landeghem, 2018; Kristóf, 2016). The disruptive nature of recent innovations is also reflected in the changing and growing number of "most innovative companies". In Fast Company's "The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies" business list (2008, 2017), the differences between 2008 and 2017 are striking. Only six companies are still on both lists: Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, Alibaba and IBM (Krell, 2017). In 2019, there are only three companies: Alibaba, Apple and Walt Disney (Fast Company, 2019). It is noteworthy that the same companies regularly appear in innovation, services and ecosystem research, with 257 entries in the Handbook of Service Science II by Maglio et al. (2019) as an example. No organization seems to be able to handle the speed on its own, so that new forms of collaboration and service innovations arise.
Within the rapidly growing importance of the service economy, service innovations are evolving into a complex network of actors. In recent decades, on the one hand, there have been many examples of the sometimes disruptive nature of the services and innovations, but on the other hand, few succeed in innovating. After all, organizations have no choice, enforcing a raison d'être requires innovations from the services, new forms of collaboration within a more dynamic and systematic approach with multiple actors. The customer is playing an increasingly important role in this. Despite the importance of the service economy, services are still a difficult concept due to their complexity and uncertainties.
The marketing literature has been acknowledging this scientific discussion for some time and is looking for explanatory factors and conceptual interpretation through the further development of theoretical concepts, such as the placement of service innovations within a service logic (S-D logic) and a more systemic view of service innovations by zooming out to the larger service ecosystem. In addition, several insights have recently emerged about which dynamic capabilities are decisive within the complexity of these service innovations. This dynamic capabilities perspective from strategic management includes, among other things, the ability of organizations to develop service innovations. In particular, by identifying, seizing and reconfiguring the external actors and opportunities.
Our empirical qualitative research formulated an answer to the question of which ecosystem-related dynamic capabilities within the actors involved, in a service ecosystem perspective, have an influence on the development of the service innovations.
The research identified a set of thirteen ecosystem-related dynamic capabilities within the service ecosystem actors involved that have an important influence on the development of service innovations (five capabilities within cluster ‘sensing’, four within cluster seizing and four within cluster reconfiguration). In cluster sensing, it is especially important to create an open mindset between the actors involved, which makes it possible to evaluate and create potential business opportunities in a horizontal setting with the various actors. It is important to always look for a common value proposition with a common philosophy or goal. Only this setting seems to allow for a far-reaching and broad screening of markets, technologies and information. The cluster ‘seizing’ shows the importance of management capabilities and the allocation and integration of resources between the actors involved. Here, the results point to the importance of involving a large number of actors in the decision-making processes, where the value propositions between the actors determine the design of the service ecosystem and their position. The uncertainty and complexity - inherent to service innovations - also require the management of bottlenecks. The cluster ‘reconfiguration’ indicates the confidence, speed, and flexibility to track and anticipate change. This is about organizing and continuously rearranging the service ecosystem within a good governance structure and requires a permanent exchange of knowledge within maintaining relationships.
These thirteen ecosystem-related dynamic capabilities show an important influence on the development of service innovations in a service ecosystem perspective. It turns out that the development of the services innovations is a dynamic process of resource interactions, in which both the value-adding and non-value-adding actors play an important role. As a result, the actors involved usually look beyond the traditional network relationally, and thus this systemic horizon necessitates new service-oriented and relational competences. To this end, the actors develop thirteen ecosystem-related dynamic capabilities in order to be able to identify the external opportunities, to organize themselves accordingly and to dynamically reconfigure them.
As a result, our research provides important new insights to various policy makers, by providing the ecosystem-related dynamic capabilities for the development of service innovations, especially within this relational complexity of the ecosystem. By identifying opportunities, organisations need to identify the ecosystem actors for the development of the service innovations. This requires a broad and open mind in order to involve non-value-adding actors, such as customers and institutions, with specific attention to knowledge sharing, common goals and value propositions. During the realization of the service innovation, the establishment of a good organizational structure is necessary through the development of the management capabilities, the decision-making processes, the key position and the timely detection of the bottlenecks in the service ecosystem. Finally, the reconfiguration phase in the service ecosystem requires a good governance structure with broad network management. Attention is paid to the inherently dynamic character and the rapid anticipation of changes in the wider environment and between the actors. These dynamic capabilities are a learning process to be further developed by continuously evaluating the service ecosystems based on future specializations.
More detailed insights from the research are available.
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Published: 15.01.2022