Applying Social Network Analysis to Discover Service Innovation within Agile Service Networks

The literature indicates that there is urgent need to address the significant gap in our ability to value the contributory interaction of service networks in organisational performance. This paper is primarily concerned with exploring how service (re)configuration is utilised to optimise network performance. The paper will summarise the literature review over the past year in the quest to document how we can understand the contributory value of service innovation networks. It identifies some interesting overlaps in business process management, service science, and network innovation literature. This paper will discuss how failing to account for the value of service networks inhibits our capability to discover and monitor service performance and how this complements the evolvement of service science. This prevents managers from transforming information on network activity and infrastructural capabilities into strategic knowledge. This paper demonstrates how social network analysis (SNA) can be a powerful tool for managers to understand organisational network performance and service interaction. [<i>Service Science</i>, ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]