Service Innovation Research in the Context of Business Ecosystems-A multidisciplinary Mapping Study

Advances in technology and digitalisation have changed the ways services are created and offered to users. Successful new innovative services and service value co-creation are done in collaboration with organisations and actors in contexts such as business ecosystems. The research relating to service design and open innovation in business ecosystems is cross-disciplinary, and relevant knowledge is scattered throughout different fields. In this research, we are focusing on the research that exists in the areas of service design and open innovation in the business ecosystems context. We aim to collect, analyse and synthesise this existing knowledge in order to increase the understanding of the companies’ service design and open innovation activities in business ecosystems. A mapping study method is utilised to identify the existing related research in the area and to create an overview. The final analysis included 38 papers. Our analysis revealed that the relevant research is focused mainly on two research areas: business research and information technology-related research. Most of the papers combine the open innovation and business ecosystem aspects, but service design is mostly present as a general view on services as means for value creation. We identified antecedents for service value cocreation, such as practices for ecosystem actor involvement. We also identified challenges, such as managing the business ecosystem in terms of finding the right actors. The results indicate that more focused research on the practical understanding of service design and open innovation practices, methods and tools as well as sound theory development are still needed as the research field matures. The results help inform future research in this cross-disciplinary phenomenon.