Abstract
Inspired by the booming service economies, both services and manufacturing organizations now regard services as a value-creating component in their offerings. Because services involve processes and performances provided or co-produced by one party for another party, it relies on seamless integration among different functions within the organization as well as collaboration with external partners. The literature on service innovation provides additional support to the prominence of cross-function integration and open innovation on developing innovative services. This paper aims to explore how enterprises collaborate with their business partners and customers to co-develop new services. Building upon the research findings of a survey and interviews on firms from 5 major industries in Taiwan, this paper proposes a typology of new services co-development (NSCD). NSCD, based on the extent of collaboration between an enterprise with its business partners and its customers, is categorized into four types: intermediary, professionalism, customer-centricity, and competition. In addition, this paper reports how enterprises in each type achieve in service innovation by possessing a specific set of organizational capabilities. Finally, we provide suggestions on the management of NSCD and the choice between exploitative and exploratory innovation.