Innovation in services: present findings, and future pathways

The purpose of this paper is, firstly, to review existing schools of thought and to identify present research fields in new service development (NSD) and service innovation research, and, secondly, to discuss future research opportunities.

The literature review is based on a search for “service innovation” and “NSD” in titles, abstracts and keywords of articles. As a result of looking at the references, as well as through analysis of papers which cite the articles identified, additional publications are included in this study.

Four schools of thought and five distinct research fields are presented. Herein, the authors show that there is a lack of studies of organisational innovations, and that differences in the drivers for radical or incremental innovations may be of degree rather than of kind. Further, contradictory results in the research field on differences versus similarities of new product and NSD are identified. In addition, the authors propose possible pathways for future research for each research field and school of thought.

The scope of publications included in this review may be subject to criticism as book‐publications may be under‐represented in this review. Also, the keywords used for the initial search could include additional words.

The paper groups previously scattered research activities from various backgrounds such as marketing and operations into distinct research fields, and presents both the status quo and a discussion of possible directions for future research.