Proceedings of the 17th European Conference on Information Systems, Verona, Italy June 8th-10th 2009
A FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSING SERVICE ECOSYSTEM
CAPABILITIES TO INNOVATE1
Riedl, Christoph, Technische Universität München, Boltzmannstr. 3, 85748 Garching b.
München, DE, riedlc@in.tum.de
Böhmann, Tilo, International Business School of Service Management, Hans-Henny-Jahnn-
Weg 9, 22085 Hamburg, DE, boehmann@iss-hh.de
Leimeister, Jan Marco, Universität Kassel, Nora-Platiel-Str. 4, 34127 Kassel, DE,
leimeister@uni-kassel.de
Krcmar, Helmut, Technische Universität München, Boltzmannstr. 3, 85748 Garching b.
München, DE, krcmar@in.tum.de
Abstract
Electronic services delivered over the Internet are gaining importance in the business world. This
area has seen an increase in scientific interest over the past years under the labels “Internet of
Services” and Web-service ecosystems. The paper develops a conceptual framework of actors and
their roles in an open innovation system for a networked ecosystem of Web-services. The framework
illustrates how open innovation can be implemented in a Web-service ecosystem to increase
innovation performance. Simultaneously this research closes a conceptual gap in current reasoning
about Web-service ecosystems that neglects innovation processes. The utility of the framework is
demonstrated by two case studies of Web-service ecosystems in which the framework was used to
identify gaps in the implementation of open innovation processes. Our research results identify
specific functions to support innovation processes.
Keywords: Open innovation, service science, service ecosystems, Internet of services, networked
innovation, actors.


1 This research received funding from the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) under
grant code 10MQ07024. The responsibility for the content of this publication lies with the authors.

Proceedings of the 17th European Conference on Information Systems, Verona, Italy June 8th-10th 2009
1 INTRODUCTION
Service innovation is a primary concern for many businesses. The importance of innovation is
increasing through shorter product life cycles, increased competition, changing customer behaviour,
and technological progress (Leimeister/Glauner, 2008). Consequently, the management of new service
development is a prime concern for companies in the service sector. Innovation is even more
important in the area of Web-based services where barriers of entry are particularly low, services can
be copied easily, and technological advances are especially rapid (Menor/Tatikonda/Sampson, 2002).
Moreover, through the development of service oriented architectures (SOA) and Web-services the
process of new service development changes. Through the development of SOAs individual service
components become more fine-grained and can be re-used which affects the way new services are
developed. This becomes especially apparent when looking at the vision of Web-service ecosystems or
the “Internet of Services.” These visions include repositories of services that can be re-used, re-
combined, and re-purposed to create new, innovative services (Janiesch/Ruggaber/Sure, 2008; Riedl et
al., 2009). The emergent Internet of services promises opportunities for new service development.
Notably, such an environment provides a fertile ground for open innovation in which Web-service
ecosystems act as catalysts. Open innovation proposes principles for the design of innovation systems
in which innovation processes are open for external collaboration with a network of customers and
suppliers (Ebner/Leimeister/Krcmar, 2010; Leimeister et al., 2009). It has been shown that
implementing these principles increases innovation performance (Gassmann, 2006). The inter-
organisational networks that are formed by Web-service ecosystems have many links with the idea of
open innovation (cf., Vanhaverbeke/Cloodt, 2006). Consequently, Web-service ecosystems provide a
promising environment for the implementation of these principles and thus maximising the benefit
derived from open innovation. To accomplish this it is necessary to understand the actors involved in
service innovation in Web-service ecosystems and how these parties can contribute to and benefit
from an open innovation system.
The paper develops a conceptual framework of actors and their roles in an open innovation system for
Web-service ecosystems; the framework illustrates how open innovation can be implemented in a
Web-service ecosystem to increase innovation performance. The framework also shows how the
current conceptual thinking about Web-service ecosystems can be evolved to incorporate findings of
open innovation research. With the development of this framework it is our objective to close a
conceptual gap in current thinking about Web-service ecosystems that neglects innovation processes
and one-sidedly focuses on processes for service delivery.
The utility of the framework is demonstrated using two case studies of Web-service ecosystems. The
framework allows the identification of both white spots in open innovation networks and specific
improvements in the implementation of innovation processes.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 reviews the theoretical background of Web-
service ecosystems and open innovation. Section 3 presents the collaboration framework followed by
the framework’s application to two case studies in Section 4. Section 5 concludes the paper with
deriving practical implications for implementing open innovation processes in Web-service
ecosystems.
2 RELATED WORK
2.1 Web-Service Ecosystems
Web-services have become extremely popular in recent years and the success of Web-service-centred
business models such as Amazon.com, Google, and Salesforce.com demonstrate the real commercial
success of these models. Building on their wide-spread use new composite services are created that
span across business boundaries in order to implement end-to-end business processes. This
phenomenon of a large collection of Web services has been described as a service ecosystem and a
growing interest in academic research is emerging as a consequence (Barros/Dumas/Bruza, 2005;