Systemic service innovation in the shipping industry

The paper presents a longitudinal single case study of a company operating and offering energy efficiency and management services for the shipping industry. The paper provides insights on generation of systemic service innovations by looking at the challenges the company has faced in this quest and how it has tackled them. The challenges reflect the competitive forces that affect the parties' willingness to collaborate for systemic innovation. As theoretical starting point the study utilizes the service-dominant logic which gives a structure for discussing the challenges on individual, organizational, industry and meta levels of markets as systems of value co-creation. Challenges related to the technological context are also added to the structure. Based on the analysis a framework is suggested for tackling the challenges. The main components of the framework are: understanding the nature of market co-development, understanding the temporal dimension of different contexts, and communication for collective sense-making. They represent strategizing in a systemic network environment affected by both collaborative and competitive forces. In practice, the development of systemic service innovations in the company is continuous piloting of possible new forms of value co-creation with customers and other stakeholders.