MISSING - Measuring Innovation in Service Systems; Indicators on New Grounds

The MISSING-project was designed with ambitious goals within four areas; theory- and measurement development, knowledge dissemination, user network facilitation and academic research/publication. The project has been organized in three workpackages. The first has been a literature review of the treatment of service and services in the innovation systems literature. The main conclusion is that service is given little attention in this literature as an object of study, whereas it includes several works treating specific services (knowledge intensive) as an important innovation system actor. The literature on services in innovation research is heterogeneous and is thus, difficult to apply to develop service innovation policy guidelines. The second workpackage has included two empirical studies (one qualitative and one quantitative) of patterns and practices of innovation in several service systems. The studies have identified service-specific innovation patterns and analysed the performance implications of these patterns (on growth, productivity and profitability). The findings imply that innovation policy may be designed to stimulate specific service innovation patterns, but what are optimal practices varies systematically by sector/system and performance objectives. The third workpackage has been a study of the innovation practices of portfolio companies. In this study, we have identified system-oriented innovation practices, but the motives behind these practices are more often growth than innovation per se, and the practices show very little integration with innovation systems as represented by public innovation policy. The results from the project have been disseminated through speeches at conferences and in smaller meetings/workshops with relevant user groups. The scientific work is also documented in two project reports published by the Centre for applied research at NHH (SNF) (SNF-Report 05/15 and 07/15), and can be downloaded from snf.no. Separate results from these reports are now under preparation for publication in academic journals.

The service sector represents more than 70% of GDP in EU27 and the GDP of service intensive countries is higher than that of less service intensive countries. However, there is a negative relationship between the size of the service sector and a country's productivity growth that can only be overcome by service innovation. The innovation system of services is less well understood than the innovation system of manufacturing and many of the innovation system models currently applied as a basis for policy de cisions give poor advice for stimulating service innovation. This project aims to improve our understanding of the innovation system of service innovation by taking a service system perspective based on service dominant logic. It includes a conceptual st udy developing the conceptual framework for empirically applying this perspective, a set of empirical studies applying the conceptual framework to measure innovation and innovation effects in selected service systems, and a policy brief suggesting implica tions of the perspective if applied to develop policy tools and to make policy decisions. The project includes support for funding a postdoctoral position and involves researchers from The Norwegian School of Economics, NTNU, Vestfold University College, University of Karlstad, Copenhagen Business School and Manchester Business School.