Service Innovativeness and Firm Value

Service innovativeness, or the propensity to introduce service innovations to satisfy customers and improve firm value at acceptable risk, has become a critical organizational capability. Service innovations are enabled primarily by the Internet or people, corresponding to two types of innovativeness: e- and p-innovativeness. The authors examine the determinants of service innovativeness and its interrelationships with firm-level customer satisfaction, firm value, and firm risk and investigate the differences between e- and p-innovativeness in these relationships. They develop a conceptual model and estimate a system of equations on a unique panel data set of 1049 innovations over five years, using zero-inflated negative binomial regression and seemingly unrelated regression approaches. The results reveal important asymmetries between e- and p-innovativeness. Whereas e-innovativeness has a positive and significant direct effect on firm value, p-innovativeness has an overall significantly positive effect on firm value through its positive effect on customer satisfaction but only in human-dominated industries. Both e- and p-innovativeness are positively associated with idiosyncratic risk, but customer satisfaction partially mediates this relationship for p-innovativeness to lower this risk in human-dominated industries. The findings suggest that firms should nurture e-innovativeness in most industries and p-innovativeness in human-dominated industries.