Innovation in Services in Brazilian Manufacturing Industries

摘要

The service sector is currently being transformed in the face of economic, technological and social change and is expanding its markets and increasing the complexity of its activities. Innovation process in services is new in academic literature and is still largely debated. Researches about process innovation realized until today for the segment of services have proven insufficient to account for determining specific characteristics inherent in the nature of the services industry. The goal of this study is to analyze the service innovation process in two large manufacturing industries, associating the service innovation models found in the literature to the organizational practices adopted by the case studies under consideration, so that a set of inferences can be made in regards to a model for understanding the process of service innovation within the realm of industrial organizations. For this purpose, a literature review pertaining to the subject was done and in-depth interviews were conducted with managers from these large manufacturing industries. The findings indicate that innovations in services present challenges that need to be clarified as innovation process, related to properly understanding the unique nature of services by structures originally designed for manufacturing, as well as the assumption of a new paradigm related to creating and developing relationships with clients on a long-term perspective.