KNOWLEDGE INTENSIVE BUSINESS SERVICES AS GENERATORS OF INNOVATIONS

Marina Doroshenko, Ian Miles and Dmitri Vinogradov

HSE Working papers from National Research University Higher School of Economics

Abstract: Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) are widely argued to be important actors in innovation systems. They are active both innovating themselves, and by providing their clients with important knowledge and learning opportunities. This study uses survey data to investigate the mechanisms of knowledge transfer and innovativeness improvement through the provision of KIBS. The empirical core of the paper is a set of Russian surveys of KIBS and their clients: KIBS are a fairly new phenomenon in Russia, so this provides an opportunity to contrast KIBS supplier-client relationships featuring more and less experienced customers. Many of the KIBS firms’ services are highly tailored to customer specificities, and we consider how far this is minor customisation and how far novel products (and thus potentially product innovations) are involved. These services typically involve KIBS consumers into a coproduction process, where both the formal supplier and the formal user of the service are engaged together in service production. Knowledge transfers through learning-by-doing in such cases affect customers' propensity to innovate and improve their absorptive capacity. The paper concludes that the generation of innovations through KIBS may well be a self-sustaining process. In this process, service providers are incentivised to engage in service innovations by more innovative customers’ demand for highly individualised services. In turn, the process stimulates the innovativeness of customers, as they engage in learning-by-doing through coproduction

Keywords: service innovations; customised service production; knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS); knowledge spill-over; learning-by-doing. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 L84 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-cse, nep-ino, nep-knm, nep-sbm and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Published in WP BRP Series: Science, Technology and Innovation / STI, June 2013, pages 1-41

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