Between envisioning and embodiment: Socio-cultural changes as catalysts of service innovation

The increased occurrence of socio-cultural changes is creating a plethora of opportunities for service innovation. Shifts of established paradigms of behaving and thinking provide space for organizations to revise emerging contradictions of institutionalized rules of value co-creation. By drawing on institutional theory we study the broad span of culturally informed shifts to provide a practical account on how organizations can take use of changing institutions to innovate a service. Through an in-depth exploratory case study of service innovation within the Italian food retail sector, we identify three concurrent and complementary sets of actions that extend the ongoing conversation on innovation in service ecosystems: Reconciling institutional tensions, Proactive scaffolding of the Proto-institution, and Aligning service with the Proto-institution. Practically, we provide managers with a toolkit and a mindset to early envision the changing institutions that herald the evolution of society and develop new services accordingly.