Service regime and innovation clusters: An empirical study from service firms in Taiwan

Abstract

The paper extends a notion of service regime framework as a synthesis approach to understand the diversity of innovation patterns in service firms. The service regime framework consists of three dimensions: innovation trajectories, appropriability, and user involvement. A dataset of leading top 311 Taiwanese service firms is collected through the postal questionnaire survey. The results reveal three newly stylized patterns of innovation in service firms: coupling innovation trajectories, joint use of formal and informal appropriability, and intimate user involvement. Moreover, four clusters following the firm-specific assumption to characterize heterogeneous compositions of the service regime are identified. The paper concludes that the service regime framework plays a major role in distinguishing specific service innovation clusters among firms and sectors. Finally, some policy implications for promoting service innovations are provided.