Abstract
Enterprise should keep innovate to maintain its competitiveness, innovation therefore become the most important strategy and core value in the whole business. Besides, government plans to encourage enterprise to set up service R&D center in Taiwan. In the past research, there were many studies mainly examining new service development process. However, how a service business organizes its R&D activities is less studied. From the perspective of organizational structure and cross functional interaction, the study identifies some key factors and characteristics in developing its service R&D organization. Based on four cases of service companies including Wan Hai Lines LTD, Chunghwa Telecom, Far East department store and CTBC Bank, the study indicates: (1) A service R&D department should be established right under the general manager; (2) Keeping the service R&D organization flat and low hierarchy to let the information flow and communication more fluently; (3) The innovation tasks within the organization should be done via projects; (4) The person in charge in service R&D organization has high degree of authorization; (5) In the first phase of FIND trending study, all the executives should join the meeting; (6) Information integration platform should be established in order to facilitate formal cross-functional interaction, whereas visions are usually shared with each other via informal mechanisms.. In conclusion, some managerial implications are provided that service industry requires high elasticity of organization due to the change of market trend and which resulting in diversity of R&D organization in service companies