Innovation in Services - Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

Innovation in Services
Secondly, the survey sought to extend the investigation of innovation beyond
the narrow confines of ‘product’, ‘process’ and ‘delivery’ innovations, by
exploring changes to the technologies and skills of the organisation, as well as
changes in its organisational structure and its inter-relations with customers and
other businesses. These aspects were included because we were interested in
trying to understand innovation (or ‘change’) in its wider context, rather than
counting innovations and comparing innovation rates.
INNOVATION AS INVOLVING MULTIPLE, COMPLEMENTARY, CONCURRENT
CHANGES
This section explores the pattern of ‘change’ in the firms that responded to the
survey across the four service sectors. As indicated above, it seeks to highlight
the fact that by concentrating our attention on product, process and
technological indicators of innovation we restrict and narrow our view of
innovation, which means we not only neglect the soft/organisational side of
innovation, but also the inter-relationships between these technological and
soft/organisational forms of innovation.
Figure 2.3 includes all the dimensions of ‘change’ that the businesses were
asked about. In each case the firms were asked to indicate the extent to which
these had changed, over the last three years, from ‘changed completely’,
through ‘changed to a significant extent’, and ‘changed but only slightly’, to
‘remain unchanged’.
The first four dimensions of change cover what might be considered the
traditional, technological aspects of innovation:
● changes to the products or services provided;
● changes to the means of producing services;
● changes to the means of delivering services; and,
● changes to the technologies used to produce or deliver services.
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