Service Innovation

CHAPTER 1

Service as the Key Driver of Growth

The importance of physical products lies not so much in owning them as obtaining the service they render.

—Philip Kotler¹

All marketing is service marketing.

—Vargo and Lusch²

There is only one boss, the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.

—Thomas Edison

Odds are that you, the reader of this book, live and work in a service economy. Over half of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) and over 70 percent of the GDP of affluent nations are service related, as defined by a traditional—and we would argue restrictive—definition of service. According to the CIA Factbook,³ the share of the service sector is nearly 80 ...