Practices of Service Innovation Diffusion

Service innovation has been often conceptualized as a linear multi-stage development process within a main innovator system. In this logic, innovation is communicated through certain channels over time and adopters play a key role in the process of innovation diffusion. This study moves away from this conceptualization and proposes service innovation diffusion as an emergent process of co-construction and sense-making by companies, customers and other partners. Such actors enact practices by interacting and integrating resources in a social, economic and cultural context. In particular, thanks to the analysis of 10 case studies we identify specific practices of service innovation diffusion in which actors make sense and share meanings about the newness, both individually and collec-tively. They are enabling confidence on service innovation, creating shared meanings among actors, and leveraging on actors’ competen-cies. The study also shows the dual role of users which can act both, and simultaneously, as adopters and rejectors.