Outsourcing Failures That Hamper Service Innovation - a Case Study Using the Service Blueprinting Method

The key objective of this paper is to identify and analyse critical failure points that may prevent potential innovations introduced by an outsourcing service provider. The paper applies the service blueprinting method as a tool for systematic description and analysis of an industrial outsourcing process. The main benefit of the service blueprinting technique is that it makes the service provision process, failure situations and relevant actors clearly visible. Hence, it is possible to develop more specific suggestions for improvements in analysed industrial outsourcing cases and also in the wider context. These suggestions focus on the key dimensions of service innovations, which facilitate improvements of the existing service processes and therefore improve service suppliers’ competitiveness on the marketplace. The analysis also yields more specific suggestions for improvements. For instance, different ways to facilitate the customer’s role as an active “co-producer” of service innovations seem to emerge as a key success factor in the future development of industrial outsourcing services.