Abstract

Continuous digital service innovation (CDSI) represents a shift toward flexible, iterative, and bottom-up approaches to service innovation in today’s rapidly evolving, technology-dominated service contexts. This study explores the critical role of cross-functional collaboration in CDSI, shedding light on its enablers and barriers at the individual and group levels. Based on service-dominant (S-D) logic, we conceptualize cross-functional collaboration as a cocreative resource integration process in which actors from different organizational functions combine their specialized knowledge and skills for mutual benefit. Based on semi-structured interviews with 50 informants from four Finnish organizations, our findings show that at the individual level, collaboration is influenced by individuals’ willingness and ability to integrate resources. At the group level, actor-to-actor interaction is facilitated by clear roles and responsibilities, shared objectives and practices, effective communication, and shared understanding. This study contributes to both research and practice by advancing our understanding of the emerging CDSI phenomenon, identifying the individual and group-level enablers and barriers to cross-functional collaboration in this context, and providing actionable insights for fostering collaboration to realize the potential of CDSI for organizations.

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