Understanding Users’ Collective Voice in Public Service Innovation

• Author: Lea Hennala,Helinä Melkas
• Published date: 01 January 2016
• Date: 01 January 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/kpm.1498

■Research Article

Understanding Users’Collective Voice in

Public Service Innovation

Lea Hennala and Helinä Melkas*

School of Business and Management, LUT Lahti, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lahti, Finland

Purpose—The study focuses on user-driven service innovation in the public sector. The objective is to discover how

individual service users’ideas may be transformed into a collective voice and to parse the collective voice into discrete

elements. Approach—A novel framework of analysis is presented, and five elements of the collective voice are identi-

fied. Findings and implications—Identification of the elements enables more future-oriented and effective management

of the collective voice and its organised use. The elements provide developers with information about the users’needs

and views and constitute a structure for the collective voice, enabling developers to better understand and address

voice in practical activities. Originality and value—The research results increase scientific and practical understanding

of collective voice in user-based service innovation and advance user-driven innovation methods. Users’ideas are the

raw material, but collecting and reviewing them is not sufficient; it is vital to deepen the process further, structure the

individual ideas and compile the collective voice. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

User-driven innovation represents one way to recog-

nise and identify the factors guiding innovation activ-

ities and the potential sources of innovation in the

public service sector. Compared with, for instance,

expert-based approaches to service renewal, the new

elements of user-driven innovation are that users are

seen as sources of innovation (e.g. FORA, 2009), and

public service developers are utilising new kinds of

methods such as user stories and various arts-based

methods (e.g. Pässilä and Oikarinen, 2014). These

new methods require novel skills from the service

developers and are used to recognise and utilise the

user’s view (e.g. Lester and Piore, 2004).

The voice of the user is one methodological

approach to generating user-driven service innovation

(see, inter alia, Wise and Høgenhaven, 2008;

Hennala et al., 2012). In the context of user-driven

service innovation, users are actors who benefit

from using services—private citizens and organisa-

tions—instead of actors benefiting from producing

and/or selling services (von Hippel, 2005). In the

public sector, users are (usually) the end users of

services, that is, citizens and municipal residents.

In this study, the concept of the voice of the user

refers to the user in an active, tangibly participatory

role (Nordic Innovation Centre, 2007). Because of

users’active participation, their voice is understood

as authentic in the study. This specification is neces-

sary because micro-level studies (Hennala, 2011;

Hennala et al., 2012) have found that even if users

are actively involved in service innovation pro-

cesses driven by development authorities, there is

a risk that the voice of the user is produced by the

authorities themselves—not the users (see also Juul

Lassen et al., 2014). This study attempts to aid in

avoiding that risk by presenting a new research-

based procedure for public sector managers, inno-

vation practitioners and researchers to use in

implementing and supporting service innovation

centred on the collective voice of users and citizens

(Fig. 1). Discerning the collective voice is vital in

today’s world in which various types of customer

feedback surveys—often shallow and hasty ones—

are prevalent, and developers may need assistance

in sorting through and interpreting the mass of indi-

vidual opinions.

The study intends to increase scientific and practi-

cal understanding of collective voice in user-based

service innovation and advance user-driven innova-

tion methods. The case study is from the Finnish

public sector, as is some of the literature cited,

because public sectors differ considerably across

countries.

*Correspondence to: Helinä Melkas, School of Business and

Management, LUT Lahti, Lappeenranta University of Technology,

Lahti, Finland.

E-mail: helina.melkas@lut.fi

Knowledge and Process Management

Volume 23 Number 1 pp 62–72 (2016)

Published online 2 February 2016 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/kpm.1498

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.