Developing a strategic abstraction tool for service innovation created by Jan Mattsson

The involvement of users and customers into the service innovation process has recently become a top priority in finding out how users derive value from different services. This has been referred to as customer co-creation. Instead of sourcing special customers to help co-create new services, we suggest that managers take a closer look at the customer interface as it is. Customers take part, and derive value, in the normal user situation: the customer interface. The problem is that this interface is not properly understood, and not investigated to its fullest extent. This can be done, we suggest, by abstracting mental models from the interactions taking place there. Based on findings from six service cases we develop a framework of abstraction mechanisms as a strategic tool to spur service innovation