1. Narrative approach to innovation
INUSE seminar
October 17, 2013
Open Innovation House, Aalto University
Mari Holopainen
Aalto University School of Science
mari.holopainen@aalto.fi
15.11.2012

2. INNOPEX – Service innovation from the
provider perspective and as a customer
experience
•
Realized in 2010-2012 in
• Innovation traditionally
collaboration with Aalto
defined as a process or an
University, Hanken School of
output from the provider
Economics and University of
perspective.
Helsinki.
• An integrative approach to
• Staff: Dr. Minna Autio, Dr. Anu
Helkkula, PhD candidate Mari
service innovation research.
Holopainen, PhD candidate
• Exploration of employees’
Kaisa Huttunen
and customers’ experiences
• Master’s thesis by Pirkka
and narratives of new
Kaijanen
services.

3. The scope
• Research questions
– How do customers’ experiences of a new service differ from the
’official’ view of a company and from employees’ experiences?
– What are the benefits/challenges of the new service
exprerienced by customers and employees?
• Methods
– 65 employee and customer interviews
– Thematic interviews and combining narratives with critical
events and metaphors to analyze service experiences (Helkkula
and Pihlström, 2010).

4. Data
• The new services we explored
– Electronic billing for small-sized enterprises
– Internet-based shopping service for metals and construction
materials
– Trade union services
– Interior decorating electronic service
– Online application and decision concerning indemnities

5. Theoretical lenses
•
Phenomenology: experiences as individually subjective and socially intersubjective (e.g. Husserl 1960).
•
S-D logic: value is experiential and co-created within social networks
(Vargo and Lusch 2008).
•
Narrative: essential in perceiving the world and bringing different layers of
meaning into dialogue (e.g. Abbot 2008: 3; Czarniawska 1998).
•
Cultural marketing and consumer research (e.g. Moisander & Valtonen
2006)
–
Marketers are regarded as designers of consumer tastes, wants and needs
–
Consumers as active players that shape and negotiate the meanings of products, services
and brands
–
Culture always shapes peoples’ habitus or strategies for action and understanding (Bourdieu
1984[1977])

6. From disinterest to glorification – corporate,
employee, and customer narratives on a new
insurance e-service
July 5, 2013, EGOS Montréal
Sub-theme 35: Organizations and their Consumers: Bridging
Production and Consumption
Mari Holopainen
Aalto University School of Science
mari.holopainen@aalto.fi, @mariholopainen
15.11.2012

7. Holopainen (2013): ‘From disinterest to glorification –
corporate, employee, and customer narratives on a
new insurance e-service’
EGOS 2013, Montréal
• Innovation is often understood in one specific way from
a particular storyteller’s perspective.
• An insurance e-services innovation as presented by the
official corporate voice, employees and customers.
• Interviews and the ‘official’ corporate narrative publicly
presented in the texts of the company’s annual report
and websites.
• Identification of dominant narratives.