Table 4 shows that increasing revenue was the
most common short-term project performance goal
(91.3%), followed by new product and service
launching (39.8%). Less than one fifth of firms
reported goals of reducing operation costs (17.5%),
increasing growth rate (of revenue)(13.6%),
improving customer satisfaction (15.5%), and gaining
new customers (10.7%). Moreover, less than 5% of
firms reported receiving the benefits of customer
retention and shortened lead time for new service
launches.
These results are consistent with the goals of
penetrating new markets and gaining new customers
in the current markets reported by these firms. Firms
regarded service innovation projects as a method of
market creation; therefore, the greatest benefits can
be obtained by increasing revenue and the customer
base and attracting new market segments by offering
new services and product packages. Several of these
findings supported the assertions of McDermott and
Prajogo [20].
Table 5 summarizes the data related to external
innovation before and after the service innovation
stages. In particular, 24.3% (25/103) of the observed
SMEs formed partnerships with external parties to
continually penetrate new markets. However, only
4.9% (5/103) of SMEs formed new business units for
managing follow-up tasks, and no SMEs formed
external alliances for market penetration within 1
year after implementing the innovation project.