Research On New Service Development Based On Resource Network Theory

With the rise of the service economy in recent years, more studies on service industries including the development of new services have increased. Among them, research on B2B (Business to Business) services is relatively lack of enough attention. Thus this dissertation is aimed to add value to new service development for B2B services. Services provided by business incubators to incubated firms are in a typical B2B form and used as sample for the demonstration of theoretical development in this paper.This dissertation analyzes the influential factors and the mechanism of new service development (NSD) from the perspective of resources network theory, to test the research model and to give implications for service innovation, by using empirical analysis on the samples of business incubators. The framework, models and hypotheses are developed from the findings of the literature and preliminary case studies. Empirical data collection and analysis is used to validate the framework and hypotheses. Combination of case and empirical studies makes this research more convincing.First, the theoretical foundation of NSD, resources network theory and relevant literatures are systematically reviewed, combined with the sample domain– business incubator B2B services– for framing the research topic. At present, the theory of NSD mainly focuses on service content, service process, service organizations, and service support. Not many studies are conducted on influencial factors, while most of them are on the relationship between two factors, which provides a potential gap to be filled by this research. The field of resources network mainly focuses on social capital, resources network characteristics, resources and other aspects of the practical application of the network, which enables a more detailed analysis of the mechanism and effect of NSD.Secondly, since business incubator is selected as the sample for theoretical development, the characteristics of business incubator and its services are described, together with the theories of resources network and NSD, the research framework of this dissertation is introduced. At present, the study of business incubator mainly focuses on the type of development stage of incubator, kinds of services, and the business model, few on the influential factors and the processes of NSD, none from the perspective of resources network. Incubators in China gradually establish links among the owners of related resources, a network of resources, integration of resources, service innovation, service capabilities, service performance of the providers and the served. The types of services provided by incubators include tangible ones, such as the physical space, and the"soft"ones, such as management consulting and training. Different services will affect the service performance in the service process and the evaluation of its services from the firms. In addition, need to consider external factors on the services performance, including enterprises, intermediary institutions, government, etc. These services related organizations are the source of resources; they are interconnected to constitute the network of resources. All these organizations were connected into resources network. On the basis of the analysis and the case study of business incubator, this dissertation studies how to use external resources networks to conduct NSD, the factors and its reaction and relationship between factors.Again, a new service development model of network-based resources was constructed based on the current literature review and the case study of business incubator. The model shows that the influential factors of NSD include services resources, service capability, service performance etc. The study shows that among the interactive relationships of service resources, service capabilities and service performance, the service resource is the basis for the development of new services; it is able to affect directly on the service capabilities and service performance. Service capabilities play an intermediary role between service resources and service performance, due to which service resources can be put to better use on service performance. Service performance is the expected outcome of service resources and service capabilities. In this process, the service resources have a direct effect on service performance, (direct path: service resource→service→performance), there are also indirect effects (indirect path: service resource→service resource capacity→service performance). On the indirect effect, the service resources firstly improve the server's service capabilities, and then increased service capabilities improve service performance.Finally, an empirical analysis was conducted. The main methods of empirical analysis are correlation analysis and structural equation model with statistical analysis software SPSS15.0 and AMOS7.0. Data were collected from two samples: (1) a survey of more than 100 incubator directors from more than 20 provinces responding to the questionnaires; (2) respondance about 150 incubated firms from 8 incubators. The data analysis tests the proposed model and hypotheses.The results of canonical correlation analysis showed that the impact of three types of resources and two types of capabilities on the service performance is different, and the impact is significant, the order of impact size as follows: social resources > facilities resources > policy resources, and social resources are mainly come from the network of resources, it means that the role of resources network have the maximum impact on service performance. The impact of two types of service capabilities on service performance is significant, the order of impact size of the two capabilities is: the capability of obtain resources > the capability of use resources, which indicating need to access more resources. The results also showed that the indirect effects is greater than the direct effect of the impact of service resources on service performance, indicating that attention should be paid the indirect impact path by increasing the service capabilities to improve service performance. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis has also been similar results.The implications of this research to practices are: (1) the real measure of NSD is the performance of the served ones; the main source to achieve it is network-related resources in the transformation process of resources to performance; (2) although both direct and indirect paths affect on performance, enhancing service capability is a more effective approach since it is an important mediating factor for the transformation.Because the general model and hypotheses for B2B's NSD are tested in only one typical type of sample (B2B incubating services), one of the limitations of the research is the suitability of the finds to all services sectors. Further study can be conducted on other B2B service industries. Another limitation is that theoretical richness can be enhanced if there is more argument on the integration of NSD and resources network theories, and more theories such as dynamic capability can be applied in the analysis.