Managing creative coalitions: Reflections on the social side of services innovation

Summary This article considers the third dimension of the oft-discussed triumvirate of services science, concentrating on how social and managerial knowledge can be integrated with science and engineering to promote services innovation. Given the backgrounds and occupations of the authors, it represents an exploration in the sort of cross-boundary collaboration and joint analysis that is vital in this area, straddling the contrasting perspectives of social science and engineering, as well as the worlds of the academic and the practitioner. Our dialogue about the principles that may be capable of supporting a multidisciplinary approach to services innovation has underlined the importance of straight talking about disciplinary tensions and priorities, and mutual sensitivity to contextual conditions and constraints. Recognizing that creative insights and options for innovative activity emerge from the lower as well as the upper levels of organizational hierarchies and that viable improvement projects must connect with local insights and aspirations, this article cautions against designer tendencies to innovate from above or beyond the service workplace. Extending the logic of boundary-breaking collaboration, it argues for a more open approach to programme shaping from a broader alignment of engineering and the physical and social sciences with practitioner perspectives from manager, employee and other stakeholder groups on the ground.