Guest editorial: Digital service innovation: ontology, context and theory

Abstract

The emergence of digital service innovation In recent decades, there has been a growing recognition of the strategic importance of services in driving industrial competitiveness, leading to a surge in multidisciplinary research in service and service-related areas on a global scale (Kreye, 2022). This increased focus on services from academia and practitioners can be attributed to the maturation and widespread adoption of servitization [1] as a strategic phenomenon in industrial environments (Vandermerwe and Rada, 1988;Vandermerwe and Erixon, 2023). As a result, research on servitization has given rise to different branches of study, including digital servitization, which holds great relevance for competitiveness in today's business landscape (Vendrell-Herrero et al., 2017;Kamalaldin et al., 2020). Digital servitization involves leveraging digitalization and related technologies to greatly enhance service offerings. This approach represents a new starting point for service-based competitiveness, with digital interaction and interconnectivity with customers and products being key drivers of business value (Sj€ odin et al., 2020).However, despite the inherent capacity of digital technologies in shaping and innovating services, traditional service management frameworks detach service constituents from the technological innovation requirements necessary for digitallyenabled service provision, diminishing the relevance, in some way, of the technological components that support both the development and the delivery of up-to-date innovative service propositions. An overlooked and unexplored debate in service research, brought forth by Opazo-Bas aez et al. (2022), reveals the ineffectiveness of service classification in industrial environments and establishes the foundation for the development of this special issue. A prime example of this can be found in the classification proposed by global innovation frameworks, such as the OECD's Oslo Manual, which categorizes service innovation as a non-technological innovation source. A rather decontextualized and simplistic categorization, particularly for current manufacturing sectors, where service provision cannot be decoupled from digital infrastructures (Kohtam€ aki et al., 2020;Kowalkowski and Witell, 2020).In light of the above, the concept of digital service innovation (DSI) arises from an updated and innovative perspective on service provision, in which both the service offering and the technological components that support it represent a single entity that can be adapted in terms of both the service itself and the technology it relies on. Accordingly, the technological building blocks underpinning the service entity enable the continuous reconfiguration of the service design to the benefit of the user/customer experience. In other words, the service itself becomes a digital innovation source that can be completely revamped in relation to the service's specificities. In this manner, DSI represents a pioneering source of technological innovation, in which digital technolog...