Open innovation forum for developing industrial service business: a case study

Service business has been topical in industrial companies' development agendas during the last couple of decades. The focus in developing new service business has shifted from after-sales to life-cycle services, knowledge intensive services and even to service dominant logic. This changes the value creation logic. In service business the value is co-created in systemic processes in the value network. Therefore, the development of the industrial service business restructures the traditional industry clusters. This paper studies through a case what kind of open innovation and development activities are feasible when the value networks are changing and development mechanisms that are built on existing industry clusters may fail or be inert. This paper analyses the developed working models, the way in which openness supports creativity and trust through clearly defined levels of confidentiality, and the way of integrating different stakeholders into an open innovation forum. Finally, a list of factors that seem to support innovativeness in this context is proposed.