Designing Service Value Networks

Innovation and technological change has always been recognized as a motor for economicgrowth in economic literature. It is also agreed amongst economists that competition fostersinnovation, and thus, is an essential component of economic progress (Teece, 1992).Coase (1937, p. 388) remarks in his seminal paper that it is not only the price mechanismthat controls and coordinates the economic system but also the firm which coordinatesvarious factors of production. In fact, innovation frequently takes place within organizationswhich are (often) organized hierarchically: “[...] firms – within certain limits – havean advantage over markets in creating and sharing intellectual capital” (Nahapiet andGhoshal, 1998, p. 242)....