Service Innovation through Networking and Value Co-Creation. Some Empirical Evidence from Hotel Industry

The purpose of this research is to study deeply innovation in service through networking strategies. In tourism sector, it is extremely interesting to study collaborative relationships even among competitors, in a general scheme of value strategy co-planning, typical of coopetition. We propose a theoretical model which deepens its roots on resource-based theory (RBT) with a service-dominant logic (SDL) perspective. In this direction, “relational view” and coopetition logic (game theory) are considered in value co-creation, applied to service innovation in hotel high quality management. This provides a fresh theoretical platform to examine aspects of entrepreneurship and improve theorising. Our theoretical framework can represent a possible tool in terms of strategic decisions’ support systems. This framework can be adopted to evaluate networking initiatives’ efficacy both in service innovation and in value-co-creation, with a set of advantages for the single firm as well as for the whole system (destination). The originality of this paper concerns its capacity of considering the issue of service innovation in a network perspective that involves RBT, SDL and coopetition.