Service innovation through an integrative design framework

Abstract

Service innovation is focused on customer value creation. At its core, customer-centric service innovation in an increasingly digital world is technology-enabled, human-centred, and process-oriented. Service innovation requires a cross-disciplinary, holistic, and end-to-end approach to new service design and development (NSD). In particular, it calls for a service strategy-aligned integrative design framework for NSD. This chapter proposes such a framework to systematize service innovation design steps, end-to-end, from strategy to customer experience design to deliver on the espoused customer value proposition. From analysis of the extant literature, the paper correlates the underlying theories and principles of disparate, but interrelated, aspects of service design thinking: Service strategy, concept, design, experience and architecture into a coherent framework for NSD, consistent with the brand value. Application of the framework to NSD is envisioned to be iterative and holistic, accentuated on continuous organizational and customer learning. The preliminary framework’s efficacy is illustrated using a simplified telecom case example.