Purpose - This paper aims to study front-line employees' contribution to service innovation, when they contribute and how they are involved in service innovation. Design/methodology/approach - The paper draws on a multiple-case study on service innovation in four organizations with extensive front-line employee involvement. The main data collection methods are interviews and observations. Findings - The paper suggests that front-line employees contribute customer knowledge, product knowledge and practice knowledge during five phases of the service innovation process - project formation, idea generation, service design, testing and implementation - and that front-line employee involvement ranges from active to passive. Research limitations/implications - Statistical generalization of the results is needed. Practical implications - The paper reveals that early and active front-line employee involvement in the service innovation process creates conditions for a positive contribution to service innovation. Originality/value - The paper suggests that early and active knowledge contributions by front-line employees to the service innovation process are associated with the creation of attractive value propositions.

This paper departs from research on Public Service Logic (PSL) to advance a framework ofpublic service innovation (PSI) by incorporating the notions of resource integration and valueproposition. The framework consists of three resource integration processes, referred to asvalue creation, value co-creation and value facilitation, through which users and employeesdetect problems and suggest solutions that contribute to service innovation by creatingnew, or by developing existing, value propositions. To test and illustrate the framework, astudy of six service innovation groups in primary care was drawn on. Four aggregates ofservice innovation ideas were identified in the study: access, patient experience, physicalenvironment and organization of work. In line with the framework, the findings suggest thatusers and employees contribute to PSI by drawing on their knowledge and experience ofconducting resource integration, and by detecting problems and suggesting solutions to theseproblems.

Service innovation processes are driven by stakeholders in interaction and are understood and sketched as a value negotiation process that consists of an iterative process of securing potential value in service. While previous research has focused on service innovation as a harmonious closed system, our study explores service innovation as a political process in which stakeholders negotiate to create and secure future value. Data are collected through interviews and participant observations in four different case studies. Our study contributes to the field by illuminating service innovation as a political process and explaining how this is operationalized. The findings also contribute to an understanding of how stakeholder resources impact a chosen strategy; the resulting strategy's impact on the service concept vis-a-vis its potential value; and how several involved stakeholders formulate, negotiate, and secure future potential value, which are the activities that drive a service innovation process.