Innovation in Services : Unleashing, Underlying and Unfolding Aspects of Innovation in Storebrand's MOP project

Abstract

The paper is an analysis of how innovation is achieved in a service sector company. In order to contribute to the field of innovation studies the thesis aims at uncovering Storebrand s efforts to construct an innovative product in response to the pension reform that introduced the mandatory occupational pension (MOP). In an effort to look at innovation as the result of various factors, a model for how innovation is achieved at an organisational level has been constructed. The findings suggest that innovation in services at a company level, based on the case of Storebrand s MOP project, is the result of external as well as internal factors. External factors unleash a need for innovation that functions as a catalyst for the innovative process. The internal factors work at both an underlying organisational level as well as the direct unfolding of innovation at the project level. Through analysing these influences on the innovative end product, the goal is to achieve a higher understanding of innovation as it is pursued in a sector that employ more than two thirds of the workforce in the developed world. In a knowledge economy that is increasingly dependent on innovation in services, this thesis is a step towards a fuller understanding of what innovation is in practise rather than theory.

Keywords: Innovation in services, organisational innovation, internal and external aspects of innovation, mandatory occupational pension.