The Different Approaches to the Study of Innovation in Services in Europe and the USA

Innovation in services is a hot topic since the 1990s, but little attention has been paid until today to the applied side of this research field. In this work we consider the features of two fundamental, large‐scale, innovation surveys: the European CIS and the American SIRD/BRDIS. Innovation surveys are the main tool through which innovation data are gathered, and these data become more and more important to test theories and to provide ground for innovation policy. Once the characteristics of both surveys have been identified, we carry on with our analysis in two ways. First, we match the surveys with the theories; second we provide a comparison between the two surveys. The different paths undertaken by the European scholars on the one hand, and the American scholars on the other, are explicitly indicated.     

Book Reviews

The relevance of innovation as an engine of economic growth has never been denied, but the main emphasis has typically been placed on the manufacturing sector. A key step in this direction is the carrying out of innovation surveys that include the tertiary sector. Along these lines, the aim of this article is to provide evidence about the innovative character of services in Spain. Drawing on the Third Community Innovation Survey (CIS 3) for Spain, we use factor and cluster analyses to demonstrate that services do innovate, and to locate these activities in the production system.     

How to Make Higher Education Institutions Innovative: An Application of Market Orientation Practices

In the present era, higher education is considered a booming and significantly contributing sector to the economy of many countries. Due to the intense competition prevailing in the higher education sector, higher education institutions need to become market oriented and innovate in courses, delivery methods and student support services. Consequently, they could meet increasing expectations placed on them for quality of education and support services. The main aim of this study is to investigate the influence of both market orientation and its dimensions, on innovation in higher education institutions. This study also considered the age of the faculty a moderator to these influences. The sample comprised 270 managers and course cordinators attached to faculties, schools or units in Sri Lankan higher education institutions. The surveys were administered for data collection. The study has several contributions to the literature- all the three dimensions of market orientation, significantly and positively influenced innovation in higher education institutions. The age of the faculty significantly moderated the influence of both market orientation and its dimensions (Intelligence Generation and Responsiveness), on innovation. This study also expand the focus of theory of six sigma by applying it from market orientation and customer orientation perspectives. Finally, this study has modified items measuring several constructs to suit the higher education context which can be used by future researchers. From the findings, several practical implications are given to officials in higher education institutions for innovating in courses, delivery methods and support services. The article concludes with many useful directions for future researchers.     

Influence of innovation on performance: analysis of Spanish service firms

The main objective of this research was to analyse innovation in service firms. In strategic management, the methodology of fit allows us to study the adjustment between two dimensions by revealing the internal consistency between them and its influence on the efficiency of firms. This paper is focused on the analysis of fit between types of services (classified according to intensity of innovation) and the innovation decisions made by these firms. The fit has been contrasted through the methodology of adjustment as an approach to the ideal profile. An important question in this paper consists in revealing whether the fit between the type of services and innovative decisions influences a firm's performance.     

Innovation and EU Consumer Law

Recent consumer policy initiatives, primarily at the domestic, but also at the European, level have emphasised the need to ensure that consumer law not only protects consumers, but also encourages competition and supports innovation. The purpose of this paper is to offer some preliminary thoughts on the relationship between consumer protection and innovation, and to consider the potential impact of the main consumer law directives adopted by the European Union on this relationship.     

Organizational Assimilation of Web Services Technology: A Research Framework

Web services is an extremely promising technology that has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of information systems. Web services facilitates vendor-, platform-, and language-independent, loosely coupled, inexpensive integration of both internal and external systems. Although there is a general agreement that Web services will have a significant impact on applications of information technology in organizations, there is a disagreement regarding the speed and spread of assimilation due to a multitude of inhibitors. In this article, we identify 3 areas of assimilation of Web services in organizations: information systems departmental assimilation, intraorganizational assimilation, and interorganizational assimilation. We propose a research framework for investigating various issues related to organizational assimilation of Web services. In addition, we developed a projection of the assimilation patterns for the 3 areas of organizational assimilation of Web services. Based on the proposed framework, we outline a research agenda on the organizational assimilation of Web services.     

农村信息服务模式创新研究

分析了当前农村信息服务需求特点;以湖北为例,从区域模式、主体模式和运营模式等三个方面阐述了农村信息服务模式创新。     

The New Deal in Services - A Challenge for Europe

This article is based upon surveys on services and their development carried out by 15 European research centres, within the context of the FASTprogramme of the European Communities' Committee. After an analysis of why the question of services is the object of growing attention on the part of governments, some of the aspects analysed by FAST, such as the new technology/service interaction and the change in the productive system are considered, and the implications of these evolutions for the community policies are discussed.     

基于流通创新的现代生产者服务业内在机制分析

生产者服务业在现代服务业中的比重不断提高,逐渐成为现代服务业的主体部分。分工的深化、经济结构的升级推动了流通功能的演变,同时也推动了流通创新,产生了效率更高的流通组织形式和流通服务提供方式。在新型产销关系下,现代生产者服务与流通服务逐渐实现了"分业经营"向"混业经营"转变的背景下,文章基于流通创新的视角,对现代生产者服务业进行了分类,从产品服务、要素服务和专业服务三者之间的关系入手,分析了现代生产者服务业的内在机制。     

On innovation patterns and value-tensions in public services

In the innovation studies literature, innovation patterns have been described, such as science-based and practice-based innovation, that vary among industrial sectors. As a consequence, firms become distinguished with respect to their typical innovation pattern. Less attention has been paid to the possibility of intertwined innovation patterns. Focusing on public sector services, this paper argues that intertwined innovation patterns emerge within public services as a response to value-tensions. Values can be defined as measures for beneficial behaviour that guide innovation. Value-tensions in public services include tensions between the political, economic, communal, aesthetic and intellectual values. The contribution of the paper to service innovation research is the emphasis on the concept of intertwined innovation patterns, such as the intertwinement of science-driven and task-driven innovation. Furthermore, the paper contributes by pinpointing how varied values guide innovation in public services.     

Do innovation spillovers impact employment and skill upgrading?

So far, the research on impact of innovation on employment and skills focused on effects within firms and sectors. Little attention was paid to the influence of interlinkages between sectors as a source of employment change. The main contribution of this paper to the field refers to broadening the analysis of innovation impacts to innovation spillovers from vertically linked sectors on firms' employment and skill change in user industries. The empirical analysis conclusively demonstrates an important role of innovation spillovers in the economy. Firms' employment growth is shown to benefit significantly from spillovers of product innovations in manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services. Similarly, firms that are subject to increased spillovers of product innovations as well as marketing and organisational innovations are more likely to upgrade their skill composition. Conversely, employment growth and skill composition of firms seem to be negatively affected by spillovers of process innovations in vertically linked sectors.     

External sources for innovation in public organisations

This article's objective is twofold: First, to provide a framework for understanding the role of external information sources in service innovation, with particular attention to innovation in public organisations. The second part of the article's objective is to test the proposed framework. Method of analysis is based on data at European level from the 2010 Innobarometer Survey on Public Innovation. Data is used for estimating a bivariate probit with sample selection, where the selection variable indicates whether or not organisations have recently implemented service innovations and the estimated variable indicates whether organisations have introduced services that are new to the whole public sector. Results indicate a significant relation between the use of both internal and external sources of information and the implementation of innovations by public organisations. External sources are shown to be more relevant for the implementation of services that are new to the public sector.     

Strategies of Major UK Building Societies: 1987-1993 Review,Analysis and Implications

During the last 20 years, R&;D and innovation activities in the service sector have clearly increased. In particular, business services are believed to be one of the main drivers of technical changes and economic progress. Looking at the labour indices calculated over the period from 1982 to 1996 one notices a remarkable increase of over 70 per cent for business services. About 8 per cent of total employment in West Germany is in business services. In particular, by taking advantage of information and communication technologies, knowledgeintensive business service firms increasingly play the role of ‘converters’ of technological information within the economy. They are providers, purchasers or partners in the context of innovation. A sound innovation capacity, especially knowledge, creativity, market and management skills, lets them become bridges for innovation.     

物流创新与增值服务

本文对物流创新与增值服务进行了概述,阐释了进行物流创新和追求增值服务的意义,以及企业如何在物流运作中实现创新和提供增值服务,论述了创新与增值的关系。     

Technology support for cooperative work: A framework for studying introduction and assimilation in organizations

This article draws on published research on the nature of the innovation process and exploratory field research in 10 companies to develop a framework for research on organizations’ introduction and assimilation of computer‐supported cooperative work technologies. The research reported in this article, part of a much larger study of the general process of innovation in organizations, focuses specifically on the transfer and assimilation of new technology innovations.

Technologies to support group process, communication, and coordination in face‐to‐face group meetings [electronic meeting support systems (EMSS)] were chosen to illustrate the use of the research framework. The article focuses on the transfer of these technologies from R“D units to target organizational units and the alignment of group, technology, and task during assimilation by end‐user groups. Research propositions are developed and discussed. Future articles will present the findings from current research that utilizes the frameworks presented in this article to study the introduction, transfer, and assimilation of EMSS in organizations.     

A comparative study of innovation behaviour in Singapore's KIBS and manufacturing firms

While most services innovation studies are concentrated on the OECD or EU countries, research on services innovation in the non-OECD context is still rare. This study investigates innovation behaviour of a certain group of services – knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS), compared with the manufacturing sector in Singapore. The main findings of this study are: (1) KIBS firms have higher innovating ratio than manufacturing firms, but innovating manufacturing firms are more likely to do R&D than innovating KIBS firms; (2) KIBS firms have higher human capital intensity, training spending intensity, innovation spending intensity, and R&D spending intensity than manufacturing firms; (3) KIBS firms and manufacturing firms have similar innovation objectives, although some delicate nuances do exist; (4) KIBS firms are less likely to have overseas partners for innovation collaboration than manufacturing firms; (5) there is a U pattern of innovation collaboration with geographic distance for both KIBS and manufacturing firms; (6) social capitals are important for KIBS firms' successful provision of innovation support to manufacturing clients; (7) the importance of spatial proximity varies over different phases of innovation support.     

泉州地区商业银行养老金融服务创新途径——基于服务创新四维度的视角分析

近年来,我国市场经济的发展与人口老龄化的问题之间的矛盾愈发明显,未富先老甚至已经成为当前我国老龄化问题的特征。因此,从市场经济发展的趋势来看,由金融机构主导来推出适合老年人养老的金融服务和产品不仅是市场发展的需要,也是金融机构未来发展的重要机遇。本文以泉州地区商业银行的养老金融服务为例,结合其发展现状和存在的问题,尝试从养老服务需求的视角,利用服务创新四维度模型的方法探讨泉州地区商业银行的老年金融服务创新的路径是:以需求作为动力,转变经营理念;加强客户关系管理,提升客户参与度“客户界面”;完善组织架构的设计,以匹配产品和服务的创新;强化信息技术的运用,实现供求的有效衔接。     

Cross sectoral FDI spillovers and their impact on manufacturing productivity

This paper explores the relationship between FDI spillovers and productivity in manufacturing firms in five European transition countries. The novelty of our approach lies in exploring different mechanisms of horizontal spillovers and disentangling the impact of backward and forward vertical spillovers from services and manufacturing sectors. We rely on firm level data obtained from the Amadeus database and annual input-output tables. The results from dynamic panel model estimations reveal that local manufacturing firms benefit from the presence of foreign firms in upstream services, especially in the knowledge intensive services, and in downstream manufacturing sector. Demonstration effect is found to be negatively associated with domestic firms’ productivity, while worker mobility and increased competition appear to be the main channels of horizontal knowledge diffusion. The firms’ productivity is also influenced positively by human capital and intangible assets. Finally, we show that the direction and intensity of both vertical and horizontal spillovers depend on the absorptive capacity of domestic firms.     

Knowledge Intensive Business Services and Urban Industrial Development

This paper analyses the role of knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) as innovation agents for other firms and industries with empirical evidence from the capital region of Oslo, Norway. It focuses in particular on the role of two sectors (software industry and organisational consultants) in stimulating innovation and growth, showing that firms in the two KIBS sectors mainly provide products and services tailored to individual clients and have frequent face-to-face meetings, relationships that may stimulate innovation. Moreover, data reveal that Oslo firms are more frequent users of consultancy services than firms located outside urban areas, suggesting a gap between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’.     

遵循人才发展规律，构建广东省协同创新生态

广东省科技人才资源分布不均,珠三角核心城市人才高度集聚,而粤东西北地区引才难、用才难一直是制约广东省区域协同发展的重要障碍。本文采用多种不同来源的统计数据结合人才流动大数据,分析广东省科技人才资源开发利用存在的问题。在广泛调研座谈的基础上,从城市人才吸引力、产业结构特征等方面分析认为,产业同构度高、创新链分工协作体系不完善和公共服务差异明显可能是导致上述问题的主要原因,并提出了完善创新分工协作、推进珠三角地区产业疏解和补足粤东西北公共服务短板,优化广东省人才资本的流动配置等建议。