While the mainstream literature on knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) has long emphasized their customized nature and their role in exploring new knowledge to satisfy each client's needs, recent research has argued that competition is inducing KIBS firms to standardize their offer. In this paper, we concentrate on a particular type of KIBS firms, third-party logistic service providers (TPLs), and analyze how two TPLs face the customization-standardization trade-off by using service architectures. We find that TPLs do not trade off customization for standardization, instead they manage to pursue both simultaneously relying on modular services, which constitutive elements are standard procedures. Service modularity enables the TPL to exploit its existing knowledge base while only some knowledgeable clients prompt TPLs to explore new procedures. Overall, our results suggest that service customization and knowledge exploration can be separated. TPLs should manage their customer relationships using a portfolio approach, balancing supply relationships in which they replicate existing services with partnership-based relationships with competent customers in which they develop new procedures. Managing the temporal separation between exploration and exploitation consequently becomes a core competence.

Provides an updated view of knowledge management strategies of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) by focusing on how those firms manage innovation in their value chains and at the territorial level. Offers an original analysis of key processes of KIBS, specializing in design, professional firms and information technology.

Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) are becoming more and more relevant both for their innovative content and as innovation boosters for manufacturing firms and, with this scenario in mind, this book first offers an in-depth analysis of what innovation in KIBS is and its performance outcomes, and then synthesizes what we know about KIBS firms’ innovation models, as well as their specific peculiarities and limitations. This book examines the recent trends in innovation, service design and development in KIBS, starting from a review of the extant literature, explaining the role and specific traits of innovation in KIBS. Then, it progresses our knowledge about KIBS and about how new technologies are offering unique opportunities to use and share their knowledge, within and across boundaries. The book also includes several cases that show how, at the micro level, firms can effectively design their services and boost their innovation performance, by overcoming some of the traditional limits of innovation in services. While KIBS literature traditionally emphasizes that innovative and performing KIBS firms rely on tight client–provider interactions with service customization, recent research suggests that alternative modes of innovation are viable for performing KIBS firms: KIBS firms can develop mass customization strategies, ease interactions with clients via ICT interfaces and leverage on focused collaborations with expert clients. Particularly, the digitalization and ICT technologies are fostering platform and modular architectural designs of KIBS, as in the software and web design services. The book seeks a broader understanding of innovation in KIBS in the digital era and will be an essential guide for both academics and practitioners interested in KIBS innovation and design.

Provides an updated view of knowledge management strategies of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) by focusing on how those firms manage innovation in their value chains and at the territorial level. Offers an original analysis of key processes of KIBS, specializing in design, professional firms and information technology.

The book provides convincing findings against the hypothesis of KIBS as a factor of cognitive convergence or loss of diversity within our economies. On the contrary, KIBS are active agents of divergence and there is no universal pattern of the nature and the evolution of KIBS, but national varieties. It also shows that in order to well understand the inter-organizational collaboration between KIBS and their clients and more generally KIBS dynamics and their performance, transaction cost economies and agent theory should be complemented by other perspectives such as knowledge-based approaches, network theories, modularity theories, etc. This book, which is strongly oriented towards both policy and theoretical questions, is a valuable addition to a body of literature which is still too scarce. No doubt that it will stimulate further research in this field. It is undoubtedly a high level, knowledge intensive service provision about knowledge intensive business services. Faïz Gallouj, University of Lille, France This book focuses on the development of Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) and the associated market characteristics and organisational forms. It brings together reputed scholars from a mix of disciplines to explore the nature and evolution of a range of Knowledge Intensive Business Services. Through an examination of KIBS sectors such as computer services, management consultancy and R&D services, the contributions in this book argue that the evolution of KIBS is strongly associated with new inter-organizational forms and that different country institutions shape the characteristics of these organisational forms. The book provides a strong contribution to theory and empirical evidence on fast-growing KIBS and their implications for innovation. The book will be of interest to final year undergraduates and postgraduate students and scholars in the field of innovation studies, organisation studies and comparative business systems, across Europe.

Over the last decade, there has been a substantial rise in the number of knowledge-intensive firms - constituted primarily of professionals. The core assets of these businesses are the people themselves. Handle them badly, and they may defect or stall. Successful managers of knowledge-intensive firms must create meaning among and inspire their employees, to ensure high performance. To achieve this, leaders must understand how to target each employee’s ambitions and challenges to facilitate their personal and professional development. This book examines what sets knowledge-intensive firms apart from other types of organizations, and the resultant organizational and strategic differences in business models, talent management, and client-handling approaches. The authors bring their own complementary perspectives on the subject: one, as the manager of a private consulting firm with a strong research background; another, as a business school professor whose practice-based skills are fundamental to his work; and a third, a world leading commentator on professional service firms acting as a consultant, business school researcher and a manager. Ejler, Poulfelt and Czerniawska present a new model for transforming the management of knowledge-intensive firms, which is supported throughout with practical examples and cases.