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Chapter 3
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-5026-6.ch003
ABSTRACT
This article presents the results of a study investigating user involvement in the idea generation phase
of service innovation, and discusses advantages and limitations of such involvement. Specifcally, the
study compares the use of social media such as blogs and future workshops to generate idea for service
innovations in the context of a research library. Our study shows that the blog is good in opening up
for user contributions, while the future workshop involving users and employees is particularly good at
qualifying and further developing ideas. The fndings suggest therefore that methods for user involvement
should be carefully selected and combined to achieve optimum benefts and avoid potential disadvantages.
INTRODUCTION
User involvement in innovation processes has been on the agenda of organizations and a subject of
innovation research for quite a while (Chesbrough, 2003; von Hippel, 2005). This is also the case for
service innovation in which user involvement has been argued to have particular potential (Sundbo &
Toivonen, 2011), among other things because services are produced and consumed simultaneously
(Vargo & Lusch, 2004) through face-to-face or ICT supported interactions between users and employees
(Sørensen, Sundbo, & Mattson, 2013). Developments within technology and especially social media
have paved the way for a wide range of new technologies such as blogs and wikis which can support
user involvement in innovation processes (Bjelland & Wood, 2008; Scupola, 2017a). More dedicated
software has also been developed such as idea competitions and innovation contests (e.g. Bullinger,
User Involvement in Service
Innovation Processes
Hanne Westh Nicolajsen
IT University Copenhagen, Denmark
Flemming Sorensen
Roskilde University, Denmark
Ada Scupola
Roskilde University, Denmark