Title: Specialisation is king: creativity support systems for service concept development

Authors: Matthias Voigt; Ralf Plattfaut; Björn Niehaves

Addresses: Thalkirchner Strasse 28, 80337 München, Germany ' Wilhelmstrasse 49, 48149 Münster, Germany ' University of Siegen, Faculty III, Information Systems, Kohlbettstraße 15, 57072 Siegen, Germany

Abstract: Service concept development is an important step in developing new services. A quality criterion for new service concepts is creativity, that is, the degree to which a service is novel and useful. This study focuses on the role of creativity support systems (CSS) in developing creative service concepts. We analyse how service organisations assess the IT they use in service concept development with regard to three distinct tool properties (playful, supportive of comprehension, or task-specific) and the impact of these properties on service concept creativity and user satisfaction. To answer corresponding research questions we conducted a survey of 425 German service companies. Results suggest that the CSS of 20-30% of the service organisations do not implement the tool properties. We found that, in general, all three CSS design properties increase user satisfaction and the creative quality of new service concepts, while task-specific functionality (specialisation) is particularly important.

Keywords: service innovation; new service development; NSD; service concepts; creativity support systems; CSS; empirical study; specialisation; Germany; user satisfaction; creative quality; task-specific functionality; services.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTM.2014.068861

International Journal of Services Technology and Management, 2014 Vol.20 No.4/5/6, pp.315 - 334

Accepted: 07 Dec 2014
Published online: 30 Apr 2015 *

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