Towards an Innovative Service Development Process in the Electricity Industry

The electricity industry is currently confronted with regulatory and technological change that leads to fundamental transformation of the value propositions and innovation processes of enterprises. New services are one possibility to compete in the new market environment. This paper proposes a service development process for the electricity industry that builds up on existing approaches. The process model was developed by means of an embedded research framework that combines qualitative and quantitative methods in a multi method approach. A first evaluation of the process was conducted with a partner of the electricity industry in Switzerland. Potential service areas resulting from literature research, expert interviews (N=19), and an Open Space event with lead customers (N=33) build the basis for a choice based conjoint study. Potential services could already be identified in a pretest study. The paper shows that co-creation with customers and experts, enables the service innovation process.