Service Innovation Genealogy: The Research Field Tells its Own Story

This paper examines the generation of service innovation research since its seminal works until present days. It derives from of an exhaustive literature review of 31 years of research on service innovation (1986 to mid-2017). We have conducted an inductive categorization to identify the leading research subjects and to explain how they have emerged and performed over the years. We present our categorization of twelve research topics that summarize the service innovation literature: Performance and measures, Customer related studies, Knowledge management, Innovation capabilities and competences, Service interactions, New services development and design, Innovation networks, Innovation typologies, Information and communication technologies, Industries X Services perspective; Public services; and Social innovations. We performed a Multiple Correspondence Analysis to identify common behaviors among research categories. We identify four different waves, which have determined and shaped service innovation rese...