Dr Ville Ojanen, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland

10-07-2006

14:00 p.m. to 15:00 p.m.

Faculty of Engineering, Seminar Room EA-06-02, NUS

It has been observed in earlier service innovation studies during the last decades that innovation in services extends beyond the services sectors to affect service activities in all sectors of the economy. Additionally, there are certain services which transfer and support - and are a source of - innovations for other sectors. The focus of service sector innovation policies should more focus on service activities (KIBS – Knowledge Intensive Business Services), not on service companies per se (see e.g. Miles, 1994). These services are most innovative service sectors. KIBS function as co-producers of innovation through their almost symbiotic relationship with clients and are thus very much a part of the innovation systems (den Hertog 2000; Nählinder 2002; Wong & Singh, 2004). This is in contrast to supplier-dominated view (e.g. Pavitt 1984; Barras 1986, 1990) in which the service sectors were portrayed as receiving an impetus from manufacturing in order to be able to embark on subsequent phases of innovation processes.

This study focuses especially on the technology-related knowledge-intensive business services and their increasing role in typical traditional industry clusters. KIBS in this context are considered as services and companies that have high-level technological or other competencies based on highly educated and motivated work-force as well as accumulated special knowledge, and which are especially significant for the long-term innovation development in their industry. Still, several KIBS companies operate in traditional business environment with the help of the working routines that have been developed during the several years in the company. This study aims to generate new knowledge to the fragmented research field of service innovation management by recognizing the main driving forces, existing routines and needed new ways of action for enhancing service innovation management in the KIBS companies of the engineering and consulting industry. Secondly, it is also aimed to analyze and compare the similarities and differences in the different areas of service innovation management in cross-country analysis with research results from different regions. Generally, the results will potentially provide managerial guidelines for KIBS firms for promoting the innovation policies in the changing business environment.

Ville Ojanen, DSc (Tech) works as a Project Manager and Senior Researcher at Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT), Finland. He received his doctoral degree from LUT in 2003. In his dissertation, the main topic was R&D performance analysis. Dr Ojanen also teaches in courses of innovation management and strategic technology management. His current research interests are related to the service innovation management and collaborative innovation in the engineering consultancies and other knowledge intensive business services. He will be a visiting scholar to ISE dept from Jun – Dec 2006 and can be contacted at ville.ojanen@lut.fi.