Antecedents of service innovation in manufacturing SMEs: an empirical research

Services have become an increasingly important competitive lever for manufacturing firms. Service innovation, therefore, emerges as a critical capability also for manufacturing companies. An empirical research was carried out in business-to-business markets, based on the “InnoScore© Service” methodology, developed at the Fraunhofer IAO. Through the analysis of collected data, the paper aims at understanding the role of an-tecedents of service innovation, such as the company strategy and the ex-istence of a service oriented culture. These factors should support the def-inition of processes, tools and organizational practices for service innovation and end up in improved business results. The evidence ob-tained through the data analysis, described and discussed in the paper, support these claims.