Social Construction in Service Innovation

The emergent service-view of innovation has led to rethink how service innovation shapes value creation, rather than services per se. The attention shifts from the content of the innovative offering to the processes through which the innovation is created in service systems. In this study we explore service innovation as a collective phenomenon of new meanings creation and sharing. Empirically we present the success cases of three innovative companies operating in the food industry: Diet to Go, Eat‟s and Gambero Rosso. We find out that the process of service innovation occurs through actors participating and sharing new value co-creation logics. Service innovation becomes a story of social construction through a process of sense-making, where boundary objects assume a relevant role in coordinating the ideas and actions of the different actors. Our study also sheds some light on the relevance of the service support system for service innovation and thus value creation.