ABSTRACT

Service design has enabled organisations to design and deliver innovative service propositions. Nevertheless, to fulfi l its potential, service design demands a certain level of collaboration among diverse groups of people, both from inside and outside the organisation. While this required diversity presents possibilities for innovativeness, it strengthens the need for intergroup interaction and communication and ‘might lead to confl ict and distrust’ (Østergaard et al. 2011). In this chapter, innovativeness is defi ned as a measure of the degree of ‘newness’ that is perceived by a social group with regard to a specifi c product. To face the challenge of creating innovative propositions, it is fi rst necessary to overcome the hurdles of diversity. Based on decades of research about human intergroup contact, a heuristic is proposed to support managers in facing the triple challenge of innovativeness.