Innovation in Services - Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

Innovation in Services
Figure 2.4: The Extent of Significant or Complete Change by Sector
Turning to other types of change, which we consider soft/organisational aspects
of innovation, the following were considered:
● changes to the skills of the workforce used to produce or deliver services;
● changes to the organisational structure of the business;
● changes to customer inter-relations; and,
● changes to other business inter-relations.
The extent of ‘change’ reported to the skills used to produce and deliver services
was remarkably similar to the extent of change to the firms’ services and their
means of producing and delivering services, with a third of the businesses
claiming the skills they used had changed completely or significantly in the last
three years (see Figure 2.3). This is unlikely to be representative of firms in these
sectors, as due to the methodology used there is probably a bias in our results
towards more dynamic or innovative firms. What is important from our
perspective is that the similarity between the level of change to skills, change to
the services provided and to the means of providing these services hints at a
connection between these dimensions of change. The extent of change to firms’
organisational structures, and to their inter-relations with other businesses
(including customers) tended to be less, but still substantial with at least a fifth
claiming complete or significant changes to these in the last three years.
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Customer Inter-relations
Other Inter-relations
Organisational Structure
Products / Services
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
Skills Used
Delivery Processes
Technologies Used
Road Transport Information Processing Design Elderly Care
Production Processes