Public Service Innovation: What messages from the collision of Innovation Studies and Services Research?

Ch. 5. P. 72–88.

Miles I. D.

Innovation studies grew rapidly as an area of research over the last quarter of the twentieth century, as detailed by authors such as Fagerberg (2004) and Godin (2010), and as reflected in handbooks giving overviews of the field (Dodgson and Rothwell 1994; Fagerberg et al. 2004). Research was long dominated by a focus on manufacturing industry, and in particular on ‘high- tech’ industries such as aerospace, the automotive industry and pharmaceuticals. Service innovation had gained substantial attention by the first years of the twenty- first century (cf. Miles 2000), to the point that a Handbook ofInnovation and Services was published in 2010 (Gallouj and Djellal 2010). But innovation in the public sector has been even more neglected in the mainstream of innovation studies. Even in the Gallouj and Djellal Handbook there are only a handful of index references to public services; one chapter is devoted to public health care, but this is mainly an account of one case study (concerning UK diabetes education). With public services constituting a substantial fraction of the services sectors, it is important to put more effort into exploring the scope for fruitful integration of work on public service innovation with innovation studies more generally.

Keywords: public services, Service innovation, Innovation Studies

Publication based on the results of: ­­­Innovation Activities of the Innovation Process Actors Monitoring Project (2013)

In book

Handbook of Innovation and Change in Public Services

Cheltenham, 2013.