Professor Antonello Zanfei, University of Urbino, Italy, will be Velux Fond guest lecturer at ISE from 26.8.2013 to 8.9.2013.

Professor Zanfei does research within the field of Innovation and have for the past three years had a focus on Innovation and e-services. He held a research seminar about this at CBIT, RUC on August 28th, where he presented some results from his Eiburs-TAIPS Project on Innovation and E-services in the public sector.

For more information please contact Associate Professor Ada Scupola at ada@ruc.dk.

“If the blog has to be used to generate a modest, but useful number of ideas, then the blog has potential to engage users in the idea generation phase of service innovations. If the purpose is to generate a huge number of ideas or engage a huge number of users, then the answer is that probably blogs are not a good tool.”

The above quote is one of the conclusions of an experiment, which was recently performed as a part of the ICE-project by associate professor Ada Scupola at Roskilde University Library (RUb). The experiment investigated the research question: “To what extent can social software such as blogs be used in academic libraries to involve users in the idea generation process of service innovations?”

Continue reading Blog generates new ideas and better image for library →

It is not internet piracy or declining CD sales that are the real problems of the music industry today. The musicians and composers have got a lot of new opportunities that are sadly overlooked by many. ISE researcher Rasmus Rex Pedersen explains this in a recent article in the magazine of the association of Danish composers and song writers.

Continue reading Digitization changes the music industry in unexpected ways →

Last summer , ISE-researcher Jørn Kjølseth Møller and co-author Steen Hvid, censor at Business Studies, published the book The Investigating Leader (in Danish “Den Undersøgende Leder”) about methods for data collection and application in leadership and management. The book is now being used for teaching at several Danish universities, and has recently been reprinted (second printing) by the publisher Samfundslitteratur.

The book provides an overview of social science methods for collection and use of data, and how these in a qualified way can be used for empirical investigations as part of being a leader or manager. It is data collection from the manager or leader’s perspective, and the book combines short accounts of theory with practical examples from different management situations. In this way, the social science methods are related to the practical leadership and management tasks, that many leaders and managers have, and which often means that they have to deal with the role as data collector and user of data in his/her own organization.
Continue reading The Investigating Leader – now in second printing →

Encounter-based innovation in service organizations varies with different organizational conditions. This is illustrated in a multiple comparative case study of 11 Scandinavian service organizations. A new article in Research Policy written by some of the researchers from ISO investigates the specific organizational conditions for service encounter-based innovation through this study. A model of conditions for service encounter-based innovation is developed based on the theoretical discussions and the case study.

The model suggests how and why some service organisations derive innovation benefits from service-encounters while others do not. The article in Research Policy provides new and important knowledge concerning user-driven innovation in services and can be purchased here: Science Direct

For more information, please contact Flemming Sørensen at flemmiso@ruc.dk.

Researchers from the research group Innovation in Service and Experience have collaborated with a hotel in the centre of Copenhagen to innovate its services. An experiment was carried out in the hotel in which employees were given new tools and applied new practices in their communication with hotel guests.

The aim of the experiment was to facilitate communication and flexibility in an otherwise traditional and rigid hotel reception service, and to integrate the traditional hotel service with the visitors’ tourism experience.

Continue reading Researchers help to improve hotel services →

A group of researchers in ISO has finished a big project about innovation in service. The project points at big unexploited potentials in employee based and employee-customer based innovation in Danish companies.

In this project, that in short is called ICE (Innovation, Customers, Employees), we have examined, to what extent the employees also is a source of innovations, which can be used by the customers.

Many employees in service companies know a lot about the customers. They meet these service users in sales scenarios and when they deliver the service.

The project show that innovation on the grounds of interaction between the empleyees and the service users already happen many places, but that it must be organized systematically, in order to yield a substantial benefit by this effort of innovation.
Continue reading When the customer meets the employer →