Innovation in services industries: current and future trends

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to compare the behaviour of service companies and manufacturing companies in technological, organisational and commercial innovation. The analysis of a sample of 11,330 Spanish companies has shown that manufacturing companies have a greater tendency to perform technological innovations, that is, product and process innovations, whereas service companies are more prone to carrying out organisational and commercial innovations. The future tendency should be determined by the use of integrating analytical approaches proposing models to reflect all types of innovation with no discrimination based on the sector to which they belong.

Keywords:

• service industries
• manufacturing industries
• innovation
• synthesis approach

Acknowledgements

This paper has been supported by Cátedra Bancaja Jóvenes Emprendedores of Complutense University of Madrid, the research project ECO2009-13818 and BSCH-UCM project of the Research Group ‘Estrategias de Crecimiento Empresarial’ (940376).