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Innovation Essentials
What is Innovation?
Understanding Service
Making S-D logic Approachable

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Below you can find all the articles on this site ordered by when they were last updated starting with the newest.  Try here if you are looking for the site’s videos or here if you are after info on any of the books I mention on the site.

I hope you find what you are looking for!

Innovation Theater
action activities ambition change needle moving ienterprise innovation = change execution ideas organisation structure performance innovation problems resistance complexity vision
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Last Updated
Category Innovation Essentials
    #Innovation Essentials
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Innovation = change.

And if your enterprise can't handle, or resists, those changes, then your innovation activities are simply innovation theater (activities that deliver few/no tangible results)

Worse, the outcome of those activities are likely increasing that resistance to change

Calls to action, hackathons, open innovation, innovation spaces/rooms, appointing chief innovation officers, claiming to be an accelerator, building silicon valley outposts - all these, and more, are at risk of being innovation theatre

Here's why....

Reading time <10 mins
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Value is Uniquely and Phenomenologically determined by the beneficiary
beneficiary determined lived-experience experiential experience economy living experience phenomenologically servicescape service design uniquely value
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Category Exploring Value, Making SD-Logic Approachable
    #Exploring Value, Making SD-Logic Approachable
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Work in Progress

In service-dominant logic, we see value differently to the traditional approach (where value is set by manufacturer and measured by the price paid - value-in-exchange). We see a beneficiary who is seeking to make progress in some aspect of their life. And they are hiring a service that proposes to help them make that progress.

Value is therefore only measurable by the beneficiary, and measures the amount of progress the beneficiary feel they have made

This measure is complicated by the baggage the beneficiary brings to the service - there lived experience. As well as the experience they have during the service provision - context, their mood, servicescape etc. Both this lived and living experience are phenomenological

We could interpret this foundational premise as the more approachable: Value is always uniquely determined by the beneficiary based on their lived and living experience

Reading time <11 mins
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Service is the fundamental basis of exchange
agile design-thinking exchange innovation job-to-be-done lean marketing-myopia market-orientation product-dominant relationship-marketing service service-dominant unit-of-exchange value
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Category Making SD-Logic Approachable
    #Making SD-Logic Approachable
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We can view how the world works in two ways. Traditionally, we see a world where we exchange outputs: called goods-dominant logic. Alternately, we could see a world where we exchange how those outputs are created.

By viewing the world through service-dominant logic lens, we remove the absolute focus of goods-dominant logic’s point of exchange. Instead service is seen as the fundamental basis of exchange.

This has many impacts. Not least it encourages us to be more relational, understand value creation differently, and see additional opportunities (reduce marketing myopia, harness circular economy etc).

And that drives opportunities for innovation and growth

Though it can be challenging to switch our lens, given the predominance of goods-dominant logic we observe and are taught daily.

Reading time <12 mins
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A service-centred view is inherently beneficiary oriented and relational
one-off transactional relational interactions resource integration value-in-exchange value co-creation
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Category Making SD-Logic Approachable
    #Making SD-Logic Approachable
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Work in Progress

We know that value, in service-dominant logic, is both co-created and uniquely determined by the beneficiary.

It then naturally follows that a service-centred view is:

  1. inherently beneficiary oriented
  2. inherently relational

It is not possible to be any other way

Reading time <3 mins
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Services Marketing Triangle, and an update
'making, enabling, delivering promise' company customer employees systems 'provider's goods' 'relationship marketing' 'internal, external, interactive marketing' Bitner Grönroos
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Category Tools
    #Tools
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The services marketing triangle captures the marketing relationships between three actors: company, employees and customer

These relationships revolve around the promise. External marketing is the company making the promise; interactive marketing is the employees delivering the promise; and internal marketing is the company enabling the employees to deliver the promise

I make a small update to reflect that customers nowadays deal with more than just employees. In a service-dominant logic view the following deliver the promise:

  • employees, including gig economy workers
  • systems of the service provider - the electronic employee, so to say
  • physical resources/goods of the service provider - the hire car or goods used for self-service
Reading time <5 mins
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The Service Mix
Service Mix
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Category Tools
    #Tools
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The service mix helps us avoid myopia in innovation and gives us the framework to see what components we can mix between in our efforts to help beneficiaries make progress.

It is part of our definition of service, and comprises:

  • employees
  • physical resources
  • goods
  • systems

that the ecosystem offering the value proposition decides to provide

Reading time <4 mins
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Evolving the definition of innovation
beneficiary-focussed helps make progress improves minimised-resistance offering resource coordination scalable sustainable co-creation of value value proposition
An updated view of what is innovation - built from a new definition of value (progress sought, progress offered and progress achieved) and insights from service-dominant logic.
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Category Innovation Essentials, What is innovation?
    #Innovation Essentials, What is innovation?
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Work in Progress

Let's define innovation, avoiding the trap of value-in-exchange (that normal definitions have) and open our thinking up for wider success.

Innovation is creating and offering a new (to the organisation, market/industry, or world) value proposition:

  1. that helps a beneficiary make progress better than they can currently
  2. that improves during, or as a result of, the naturally occurring value co-creation
  3. which is delivered through the scalable and sustainable co-ordination of skills and resources (often across an ecosystem)
  4. and where resistance is minimised

Note, in particular, how our service-dominant logic lens steers us to focus differently on value. compared to normal old-school definitions

Reading time <14 mins
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Goods are good; services bad – not quite
intangibility scalability inconsistency customisation inseparability involvement marketing mix inventory 'value creation on use(s)' 'service are good'
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Category Understanding Service
    #Understanding Service
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In a goods-dominant logic, we define services in contrast to goods. And the definition leads to negative interpretation of service. Goods are good, services are inconsistent, inseparable, can't create an inventory etc

But is this tarring of service justified and correct? Not really. And we'll summarise two papers in this article to highlight this:

  • Lovelock & Gummerson show that not all goods-dominant logic attributes for services are applicable to all services.
  • Lush & Vargo show that these negative attributes should be looked at as benefits.

Intangibility powers scalability, inconsistency is really customisation. Lack of inventory reduces costs and focusses value creation at the point of consumption. And inseparability/involvement leads to the benefit of co-creation of value.

Reading time <8 mins
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