Services and innovation

This chapter aims to overcome the relative silence in the dialogue between technology-oriented innovation studies and service innovation research. Rather than viewing services as just an additional factor of innovation activities, it is argued that its inclusion requires a revised understanding of the concept of innovation itself. This chapter reviews the perspectives of assimilation, differentiation and integration in the interdisciplinary evolution of research on service innovation. It is argued that an integrative approach is best suited to capture the contemporary servitization in manufacturing and the increasing division of knowledge-based labor, leading to convergence between production and services both within and between firms. It is argued that this convergence yields opportunities for regional economies to leverage their innovativeness and competitiveness by both specializing in services and integrating services into the production system.