Digital Innovation is investigating how small service companies currently undertake new product development so that we can improve how innovation in services is taught.
From retail to real estate, transport to tourism, services provide 150 million EU jobs and their role in driving smart, sustainable and inclusive growth is undisputed. It has long been a concern that service firms are less innovative than manufacturing industries. Fortunately, the landscape is changing and today companies have unprecedented opportunities to implement radical innovations based on transformative technology and knowledge capabilities.
Unfortunately, very few small firms are making use of this digital innovation capacity.
Digital Innovation is working to create three innovative resources to address this. These resources are:
The Digital Innovation Audit is a state-of-the-art review on new service development by micro businesses and SMEs.
Digital Innovation Benchmarking Tool is an innovative, online interactive tool for SMEs to identify their current digitisation levels. This simple, yet powerful tool will help businesses to create a benchmark of where their new product development process is in terms of utilizing digital tools which are available.
Problem Based Learning Open Educational Resources engage a critical thinking approach to teaching Digital Innovation for service sector SMEs. Students will be encouraged to use existing resources on innovative digital skills as a starting point in choosing the applicable/appropriate tools which they will utilise in their PBL solutions.
You can find out more about these resources and the work of the Digital Innovation project here: