Author:
Kristina Buhagiar
Affiliation:
The Edward de Bono Institute for Creative Thinking and Innovation, University of Malta, Msida, Malta
Keyword(s):
Service Innovation, Knowledge Resources, Dynamic Capabilities, Microfoundations, Boutique Hotels.
Abstract:
Service innovation has come to reflect a multidimensional and fuzzy construct defined by elusiveness. As such, the terminology ‘service innovation’, while increasingly important in servitized and experience-based economies, has come to denote ‘everything and nothing at the same time’. Further amplifying these issues, scholars remain divided on whether service innovation should be explored from a demarcation, synthesis, or assimilation approach, while service innovation process models provide overly simplified representations of the service innovation process. To counteract these shortfalls, and based on Buhagiar et al.’s (2021) conceptual multi-level model of service innovation, this paper, through the application of a qualitative methodology, explores the service innovation process of boutique hotels located in Valletta, Malta. The results of this study explicate that knowledge resources and the capacity of personnel in boutique hotels to combine and transform knowledge resources, a
t both the micro-level and firm-level, mirror core capabilities necessitated to develop innovation in boutique hotels. Furthermore, service innovation emerged as a human-centric process, with idea generation inherently contingent on the cognitive capacities of personnel in boutique hotels. Thus, inciting the innovation process in boutique hotels emerged as contingent and path-dependent on the motivations of personnel to identify innovation opportunities, and externalize subjective tacit knowledge.
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