Mindful new service conception in not-for-profit organisations: a study of sustainable innovation with scarce resources

Abstract

Service innovation entails developing new services, but new service development can be difficult even with slack resources. While no consensus has been reached on the determinants of new service development (NSD) performance, some research has pointed to the importance of new service conception (NSC) practices. Research into NSC is still immature, though, and what we know about it is grounded in traditional expectations of slack resources. To better understand how new services are conceived under conditions of resource scarcity, we draw from an embedded, interpretive case study of an innovative organisation that managed ongoing new service conceptions for more than ten years under conditions of continually reduced resources. Findings show that this organisation was able to conceive many successful new services by: 1) mindfully identifying new, germane customer needs while engaging with new information sources; 2) keeping in mind unresolved customer needs while trying to identify matching potential solutions, especially external resources. This paper contributes to the NSD literature by advancing a model based on these findings.