Services and organisational innovation : the right mix for value creation

Purpose: The paper aims to discuss how services and service innovation are inter‐linked and support organisational innovation. In particular, the reorganisation of operations and the introduction of new organisational arrangements are examined and conceptualised for further empirical analysis. Design/methodology/approach: Based on the analysis of the different, most recent developments in the literature and practical experiences, a conceptual framework is developed that incorporates service and organisational innovation. Findings: The developed conceptualisation focuses on the role of services and service innovation, and the emerging interactions between organisations and services providers, where facilitators play a role. Accordingly, services are no longer a secondary instrument of the value chain. Instead, they have become essential and may add value from their involvement, for example, in product design, business management, procurement in global markets, and support to customers' participation in value creation. Research limitations/implications: The paper provides a concept derived from an in‐depth literature analysis. In a next step an empirical analysis based on the proposed concept would complete the theoretical findings. Practical implications: The proposed conceptual framework supports the overall recognition of service and organisational innovation as a powerful mechanism to gain competitive advantage for companies. Originality/value: This paper proposes for the first time a conceptual framework that shows that organisational innovation turns into a prevailing tool that facilitates the integration of service innovations into the value chains of companies, and thus the increasing level of inter‐connectedness required for firms' competitiveness.