Service Measurement and Innovation: A policy perspective

What is it about?

In an increasingly globalised world economy, firms in the developed world are encouraged to move up the value chain in order to remain competitive. In many cases this means offering services, either as a stand alone, or increasingly as a complement to existing products. Indeed, services are hugely important to the UK making up about 75 per cent of GDP. It is a significant contribution. Yet, despite the importance and the rapid growth of the service economy over past decades, there has not been a commensurate development of policies and collection of data to support to promote innovation in business services. The reason for this is most likely because of the comparatively poor understanding of services, both in terms of the definition, classification and measurement of services, service innovation, and service performance.

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Why is it important?

In recent years, there has been significant growth in the contribution of services to the economy of developed nations. The challenges relating to the definition and classification of services, alongside the measurement of their performance and innovative effort raise a number of important issues yet to be addressed adequately.This has partly contributed to the delay in the development of public policies aimed at sustaining the growth of services.This chapter aims to shed some light on the conceptualization of services and service performance

Perspectives