Towards a theory of a practice-based approach to service innovation within spheres of interaction

Practice-based research provides a special view on service innovation as emerging from everyday actions related to social worlds (Ellström, 2010; Feldman and Orlikowski, 2011; Fuglsang and Sørensen, 2011; Skålén et al., 2015) rather than being only a result of systematic R&D activities. This view may be particularly relevant to services that are seldom R&D based and often develop from employees' and customers' experiences and practices. Thus, from a practice-based perspective, innovation is difficult to control and linearize. Yet, recognizing the practice-based character of innovation may enable service managers to engage with and further develop innovative activities present in an organization.