Redefining market opportunities through technology-oriented service innovation

Given the dominance of services in most advanced economies, organizations seeking to grow must rely on service innovation for continued business success. Manufacturers, in particular, are becoming increasingly dependent on services as extensions of their product models or remaking themselves into service companies. However, most improvements to services are incremental and often “me too” in nature. It is relatively rare and difficult for a company to develop a service that creates an entirely new market space or reshapes an existing market. Those companies that can create or redefine markets have the potential to make the competition irrelevant and gain significant competitive advantage. Market creating factors include core benefits vs. delivery benefits, separable vs. inseparable service dimensions, and marketing strategy approaches that can leverage disruptive value to create uncontested market space. To illustrate these concepts, this paper explores the service innovation approaches of six technology companies as they relate to redefining market opportunities to create uncontested market space.