This chapter is conceptual and starts from practice-based research on innovation to develop a framework of service innovation by integrating a concept of ‘relationality’ into the practice-based approach and specifying sub-practices of service innovation. The framework extends previous approaches to practice-based research on service innovation by seeking to explain more effectively how service innovations are related to the social environment and progressively become stabilized within collective structures – thereby moving the focus of service innovation research from creativity to stabilization. Stabilization refers to the acceptance of an innovation in society and the market. The chapter outlines three relational sub-practices of innovation that describe different types of interactions with the environment related to service innovation at the micro, meso and macro level. These are: the bricolage approach, the system-oriented approach, and the systemic approach. In two case vignettes, the chapter illustrates the framework and discusses implications for research and management.

This chapter presents the critical incident technique (CIT) and argues that CIT, when combined with other more ‘reflexive’ approaches, can provide an analysis of everyday experiences of services and make these experiences useful for innovation. The chapter seeks to place the critical incident technique in three different research traditions, with examples from services and innovation: positivist–functional, phenomenological–interpretivist and process-oriented reflexive. The value of the critical incident technique as a special interview and research technique for service innovation research is discussed.