Technological and non-technological innovations in B2B mobile services in Korea

This article examines the characteristics of business-to-business (B2B) mobile services in Korea in order to identify technological and non-technological innovations. A statistical analysis of 242 services was done to characterize B2B mobile services in Korea. Subsequently, service products were grouped into seven types based on service characteristics: mobile office/education solutions, network solutions, multimedia broadcast solutions, business analytical solutions, security and safety solutions, payment processing solutions and machine-to-machine (M2M) solutions for facility management. From a characteristics-based approach, new' service characteristics after 2009-2010 are linked with radical innovation while service characteristics prior to 2009-2010 (but have been improved') are linked with incremental innovation. A combination of improved' and new' service characteristics are linked with semi-radical innovation. Subsequently, incremental, radical and semi-radical innovations were distinguished. From the perspective of non-technological innovation, recombinative and customized innovations were identified to focus on the direct competences of service providers and users.