Purpose Fierce competition drives software vendors to rely on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) strategies and to continuously match new releases with customers’ needs and competitors’ moves. Such recurrent release practices pose specific challenges for software vendors which shape how they service customers. To address these challenges, this paper aims to apply service science to innovate strategies for SaaS release management. Design/methodology/approach Based on action research methodology, the authors collaborated closely with Software Inc., an alias for a large multinational software provider, to apply service-dominant logic systematically, to analyze and improve its SaaS release management process and to support ongoing value co-creation with its customers. Findings The authors provide a detailed account of how Software Inc. improved its SaaS release management practices; they extend current understanding of service innovation dynamics in SaaS environments and offer a model of value co-creation in SaaS release management grounded in the findings from Software Inc. Research limitations/implications The research draws on a single case study with particular characteristics. Still, it allows for analytical generalizations with both theoretical and practical implications for how SaaS managers can improve recurrent release practices based on foundational service-dominant logic principles. Practical implications The authors suggest that SaaS managers concentrate on knowledge-sharing with customers, ensure continuous communication among teams supporting the service, re-organize release management to enhance the value co-creation process, use technology to improve customer service experiences and use service mapping to improve release management and service quality. Originality/value The authors bridge service-dominant logic principles and SaaS knowledge by demonstrating how service-dominant logic can be used to improve SaaS release practices and by offering conceptual and practical knowledge about value co-creation between customers and suppliers in SaaS contexts.

Extant literature suggests that acquisition of innovative capability is challenging: the acquired firm must be integrated to realise synergies, but such integration might jeopardise the ability to sustain its innovative capability within the acquiring firm. However, we know little about how managers address this coordination-autonomy dilemma post-acquisition. We therefore investigated how GlobalTech, a multi-national telecommunications solutions provider integrated SmartTech, a small, innovative firm with an adaptive infrastructure management solution and a customer-driven innovation approach. Drawing on dynamic capability theory (DCT) and focusing on structural integration and informal coordination, we reveal how the two management teams collaborated over a two-year period to sustain SmartTech's innovation capability while at the same time leveraging it as part of GlobalTech's position and future path. In conclusion, we present a process model with related action strategies for how organisations can orchestrate dynamic capability to manage the coordination-autonomy dilemma post-acquisition.

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