Service innovation and social innovation

This chapter develops a research agenda for the examination of service and social innovations: innovations that concern complex social issues and usually result in new or improved services. The chapter starts with a summary of the interlinkages between service innovation and social innovation based on a brief review of the existing studies. The main part of the chapter identifies topics for future research. It highlights the perspective of social innovation, which is less established compared to service innovation, but crucial for answering the problems of equality and sustainability in today’s society. Research needs are identified in two sections: deepening the insights on the nature of social innovation at the macro (societal), meso (institutional) and micro (organisational) level, and developing governance structures and innovation policies (‘revitalisation’ of the innovation system approach, support to citizen empowerment and societal embedding, renewal of the public sector and public–private innovation networks, versatile use of digitalisation).