Capability Demands of Digital Service Innovation

Introduction

Digital service innovation is emerging in diverse sectors in the economy, including, retail, education, tourism, hospitality, social services, and distribution. This chapter synthesises findings from three different research projects to address questions about how digital service innovation is changing work; what types of change will be socially beneficial; what digital skills will be required by the future workforce; and how education and training can meet these needs. This chapter will explore four questions:

• •

  how is digital service innovation changing work and workplaces?

• •

  what are the potential socio-cultural benefits and pitfalls of digital service innovation?

• •

  what are the implications of these changes for digital literacy? and

• •

  how is education and training being developed to meet various digital literacy needs of the future?

Background

Digital Service Innovation is driven by the need to deliver new solutions rapidly to a wide audience through digital technology. Digital Service Innovation is often assumed to be motivated by the pursuit of economic efficiency and the use of ICT to reduce workforce cost (Green, 2017) producing savings that are passed on to consumers as lower prices, or through increasing profit. Nylén and Holmström (2015) contend that better user experience is at least as important as price competition.