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Technology-enabled business-to-business (B2B) services contribute the largest share to GDP growth and are fundamental for an economy’s value creation. This article aims to identify key service- and digital technology-driven B2B innovation modes and proposes a research agenda for further exploration.

This conceptual paper adopts a techno-demarcation view on service innovation, encompassing three core dimensions: service offering (the service product, or the “what”), service process (the “how”) and service ecosystem (the “who/for whom”). It delineates the implications of three digital technologies – the internet-of-things (IoT), intelligent automation (IA) and digital platforms – for service innovation across these core dimensions in B2B markets.

Digital technology has immense potential ramifications for value creation by reshaping all three core dimensions of service innovation. Specifically, IoT can transform physical resources into reconfigurable service products, IA can augment and automate a rapidly expanding array of service processes, while digital platforms provide the technical and organizational infrastructure for the integration of resources and stakeholders within service ecosystems.

This study suggests an agenda with six themes for further research, each linked to one or more of the three service innovation dimensions. They are (1) new recurring revenue models, (2) service innovation in the metaverse, (3) scaling up service innovations, (4) ecosystem innovations, (5) power dependency and lock-in effects and (6) security and responsibility in digital domains.

For an entrant platform in the on-demand service market, choosing an appropriate employment model is critical. This study explores how the entrant optimally chooses the employment model to achieve better performance and investigates the optimal pricing strategies and wage schemes for both incumbent and entrant platforms.

Based on the Hotelling model, the authors develop a game-theoretic framework to study the incumbent's and entrant's optimal service prices and wage schemes. Moreover, the authors determine the entrant's optimal employment model by comparing the entrant's optimal profits under different market configurations and analytically analyze the impacts of some critical factors on the platforms' decision-making.

This study reveals that the impacts of the unit misfit cost of suppliers or consumers on the pricing strategies and wage schemes vary with different operational efficiencies of platforms. Only when both the service efficiency of contractors and the basic employee benefits are low, entrants should adopt the employee model. Moreover, a lower unit misfit cost of suppliers or consumers makes entrants more likely to choose the contractor model. However, the service efficiency of contractors has nonmonotonic effects on the entrant's decision.

This study focuses on an entrant's decision on the optimal employment model in an on-demand service market, considering the competition between entrants and incumbents on both the supplier and consumer sides, which has not been investigated in the prior literature.

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) calls for far-reaching changes to the way economic activity will occur in EU digital markets. Before its remedies are imposed, it is critical to assess their impacts on individual markets, the digital sector, and the overall European economy. The European Commission (EC) released an Impact Assessment in support of the DMA that purports to evaluate it using cost/benefit analysis.

An economic evaluation of the DMA should consider its full impacts on dynamic competition. The Impact Assessment neither assesses the DMA's impact on dynamic competition in the digital economy nor evaluates the impacts of specific DMA prohibitions and obligations. Instead, it considers benefits in general and largely ignores costs. We study its benefit assessments and find they are based on highly inappropriate methodologies and assumptions. A cost/benefit study using inappropriate methodologies and largely ignoring costs cannot provide a sound policy assessment.

Instead of promoting dynamic competition between platforms, the DMA will likely reinforce existing market structures, ossify market boundaries, and stunt European innovation. The DMA is likely to chill R&D by encouraging free riding on the investments of others, which discourages making those investments. Avoiding harm to innovation is critical because innovation delivers large, positive spillover benefits, driving increases in productivity, employment, wages, and prosperity.

The DMA prioritizes static over dynamic competition, with the potential to harm the European economy. Given this, the Impact Assessment does not demonstrate that the DMA will be beneficial overall, and its implementation must be carefully tailored to alleviate or lessen its potential to harm Europe’s economic performance.

Recent literature on customer engagement has introduced the concept of “actor engagement,” which serves as the foundation for this study. The study aims to investigate the formation of engagement and engagement's impact on the performance of sharing economy platforms in an international context.

The study analyses unstructured data from 145,434 service providers and 1,703,266 customers on Airbnb across seven countries (USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, China and Singapore). Machine learning techniques are used to measure actor engagement, and the research model is tested using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The findings suggest that actor engagement, encompassing the reciprocal relationship between customer engagement and service provider engagement, has a significant impact on platform performance. The moderator analysis highlights the role of cultural differences in the relationship between customer engagement and service provider engagement and between actor engagement and platform performance. Specifically, the study reveals that actor engagement exhibits a more pronounced impact on platform performance in Western countries (such as the USA, Australia and the UK), compared to Eastern countries (such as China and Singapore).

The analysis of the conceptual model is based on the utilisation of behavioural data obtained from the Airbnb website. Due to the nature of the available data, proxies are employed as measures for variables such as platform performance.

This research is amongst the first to provide empirical evidence for actor engagement formation and the function's role in platform performance in the sharing economy. The global nature of Airbnb as a platform facilitates the investigation of country-level factors, specifically cultural values, across seven diverse countries and highlight differences from business to customer (B2C) business models.

Although green logistics has become a new focus of cooperation between government and enterprises under environmental constraints, how local governments formulate subsidy policies to effectively guide the green transformation of regional logistics and how to facilitate the reasonable cost-sharing are rather critical. This paper will deeply explore the dynamic process of the tripartite participation (government, platform, and logistics enterprises) in the selection of regional green logistics strategy, and reveal the evolutionary game relationship of the three parties.

To explore the dynamics involving the government, platform and logistics enterprises for the green logistic transformation, and reveal the evolutionary gaming among the three parties, based on the bounded rationality premise, this study constructs the tripartite asymmetric evolutionary game models, uses the stability theorem of differential equation to explore the evolution and stability strategy of the system in different cases and explicates the paths of influence on the tripartite behaviors via simulations.

Results of this study indicate that there exist stable equilibrium strategies among the three parties regarding the regional green logistics, and they are affected by different factors. The government's subsidy, subsidy intensity and the platform's cost-sharing proportion can generate positive effects, but the latter two can also impact negatively beyond the effective ranges. The findings provide a theoretical basis for local governments, platforms and logistics enterprises to formulate justifiable subsidy intensity and determine reasonable sharing proportion.

Firstly, considering the significant relevance of local government, it is included in the evolution model, and the tripartite game (among government, platform and enterprises) is explored; Secondly, by comparing the equilibrium results under different game conditions, this paper analyzes the evolution of each party's game strategy to achieve the optimal return under bounded rationality and the important factors determining the strategic selection; Finally, the key factor of platform cost sharing is involved, and to what extent the change of platform cost sharing ratio will influence the systematic stability is explored.

Digital service innovation (DSI) is a type of technological innovation that is recognized in practice in the innovation structure of companies. Given the breadth of digital technologies that enable digital services and the variety of these services, analysis is needed to discern the nature of these services, as well as the process that culminates in co-innovation. The literature on DSI is fragmented and spread across multiple research areas. This fragmentation impedes conceptualization of the elements that constitute DSI. This paper describes the nature of DSI through the process and elements of initiation, adoption and routinization of DSI in the context of digital service platforms (DSPs).

This paper presents a single exploratory case study of a provider of a leading digital solution in customer relations. The data analysis is based on abductive reasoning.

The paper conceptualizes the nature of DSI and describes the process and elements of DSI (phases, actors, functions and interactions). It contributes to building a common language for DSI research in service management. The analysis shows that DSI in DSPs is synonymous with co-innovation. This paper offers insight into how co-innovation occurs, using hybrid agile methodologies with the coordination of multiple actors and multilateral interactions.

The originality and value of the study reside in its conceptualization and analysis of what is meant by DSI. The components of the service and the technological requirements for not only provision but also ideation and development appear to be inseparable. The study unveils the mechanisms that turn a digital service solution into a co-innovative proposal. This knowledge can facilitate scalability in digital services.

We investigate the extended service strategy choices of competing manufacturers and examine their impact on the retail platform.

We construct a supply chain model with a retail platform as the leader and manufacturers as the followers. Manufacturers face differential consumer preferences on the same agency retail platform, and they can sell a bundled extended service product and sell a separate product without any extended service.

The sale of extended warranty services on the retail platform leads to lower pricing of the manufacturers' products and changes in the product market structure in response to differences in consumer preferences. The retailing platform tends to provide an extended warranty conditionally. The sale of extended warranty services on a retail platform would be detrimental to the interests of the manufacturer who sells products with extended warranty services and in favor of the manufacturer who sells products without them.

The equilibrium results of the retail platform’s non-sales and sales of extended warranty services for the no-extended warranty product under the same commission rate and differential commission rate models are discussed, and the product structure of the market is investigated, respectively.

This study investigates how role overload in the sharing economy leads to emotional exhaustion, which restricts value co-creation activity, and also investigates the moderating effect of perceived platform support.

Two experimental investigations and field research questionnaires were given to respondents with shared mobility industry expertise.

First, role overload detrimentally affects service providers' value co-creation behavior; second, emotional exhaustion acts as a mediator between role overload and value co-creation behavior; and finally, perceived platform support moderates the adverse effect of role overload on emotional exhaustion.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to explore the antecedents of value co-creation behavior from the service provider's perspective, extending the application of COR theory in a sharing economy context.

First, alternative mediators between role overload and emotional exhaustion were not identified. Second, other dimensions of role overload and their impacts were not examined. Lastly, this study did not explore broader perspectives beyond algorithms.

This study recommends that managers reduce role overload ex ante in terms of clarifying responsibilities and obligations, providing substantive resource support and rationalizing order allocation, respectively.

Mobility as a service (MaaS) is a new model of bundling personal transport options from multiple providers to provide frictionless service. The model integrates information and service to enable users to search, book and pay through a single digital platform. The aim of MaaS is to minimize individual car ownership and revolutionize personal mobility habits in favour of sustainable modes. Thus, it is important to understand consumers' readiness for MaaS. This study explains the factors that influence MaaS adoption.

A comprehensive review of the related literature has been conducted, leading to the development of a conceptual model for investigating the key factors that influence MaaS adoption. The model draws upon the digital platform, schema congruity and planned behaviour theories. The model is then tested using structural equation modelling and survey data collected from 331 respondents.

The findings indicate that MaaS information schema congruity, the digital platform's personalizability, customizability, functional integration, network integration and governance of data together with attitude towards MaaS and subjective norm concerning MaaS influence MaaS adoption. Furthermore, MaaS digital platform expectation and MaaS information schema congruity contribute to users' attitude towards MaaS use.

The paper highlights the design and informational attributes of MaaS platforms that influence their adoption and contributes an integrated research model that links digital platform characteristics, behavioural factors and information schema congruity. Future research can use the constructs and measures we developed in this study to build deeper understanding of what contributes to the success of digital platforms.

Digital innovation requires organizations to reconfigure their information technology infrastructure (ITI) to cultivate creativity and implement fast experimentation. This research inquiries into ITI generativity, an emerging concept demoting a critical ITI capability for organizational digital innovation. More specifically, it conceptualizes ITI generativity across two dimensions—namely, systems and applications infrastructure (SAI) generativity and data analytics infrastructure (DAI) generativity—and examines their respective social and technical antecedents and their impact on digital innovation.

This research formulates a theoretical model to investigate the social and technical antecedents along with innovation outcomes of ITI generativity. To test this model and its associated hypotheses, a survey was administered to IT professionals possessing knowledge of their organization's IT architecture and digital innovation performance. The dataset, comprising responses from 140 organizations, was analyzed using the partial least squares technique.

Results reveal that both dimensions of ITI generativity contribute to digital innovation performance, with the effect of DAI generativity being more pronounced. In addition, SAI and DAI generativities are driven by social and technical factors within an organization. More specifically, SAI generativity is positively associated with the usage of a digital application services platform and IT human resources, whereas DAI generativity is positively linked to the usage of a data analytics services platform, data analytics services usability and data analytics human resources.

This research contributes to the literature on digital innovation by introducing ITI generativity as a crucial ITI capability and deciphering its role in digital innovation. It also offers useful insights and guidance for practitioners on how to build ITIs to achieve better digital innovation performance.