Towards a universal definition of service innovation

Despite the increasing literature on service innovation, the definition of the concept service innovation remains debated. Adopting the principles of a systematic review, this paper aims to review the previous literature for the period 2007-2022, synthesise towards the definition of service innovation focusing on published scholarly papers on service innovation, and further identify future research directions on the concept. This paper critically reviewed and discussed previous scholarly papers on service innovations using inclusion and exclusion criteria. This study demonstrates that the definition of service innovation is a multi-dimensional term that requires further scrutiny by providing an expanded definition. This paper concludes by providing future research directions.