Finding the Next Edge in Service Innovation : A Complex Network Analysis

The topic of service innovation (SI) attracts substantial interest among both service researchers and industrial practitioners. Drawing from network theory and complex network analysis methods, this chapter maps the conceptual structure of SI by detecting and delineating related themes and their interconnections. Based on subject terms collected from more than two thousand SI-related articles published in 786 scholarly journals during the years from 2003 to 2018, six SI clusters or domains are identified. Next, the critical concepts, typical research methods, and prominent industry contexts of each domain are recognized and further used to inform a multi-level SI conceptual framework. This chapter closes with a discussion on the proposed structural holes that imply novel, combinative research opportunities between otherwise disparate domains for future SI research