Understanding of Customers’ Competencies and Resources as a Base for Innovation of Inclusive Digital Social Services

The purpose of this research-oriented development work was to develop a model to identify and utilize the customers’ own and external competencies and resources as a base for social innovation. The objective was to provide DigiIN project of Laurea UAS and a Finnish case organization with understanding of socially marginalized young adults to be used to develop the service culture of the case organization and innovate inclusive, digital social services. The theoretical framework is based on the realization that in service-dominant and customer-dominant logics, social innovation, design thinking and service design, the customer competencies and resources are seen as the source of value as well as raw material for co-design, co-creation, and innovation. This is combined with theory of social and digital inclusion and service design. By using customers’ competencies and resources or supporting them, the organization can create services that fit in to their customers’ life and offer value. Mobile probing and interviews with an additional focus group were used to understand the life of eight customers, define existing competencies and resources, and determine expectations for the co-creation of digital services. The data were used to design three personas, empathy maps, customer ecosystem maps, resource integration maps and a resource availability table. Additionally, a recommendation for how to utilize these resources to develop new, digital social services in the further steps of the DigiIN and the case organization’s development was presented. The work revealed that young, socially marginalized adults have diverse competencies and resources that can be utilized in the development of new digital services: customer groups’ own expectations for the participation in co-design and development must be considered. Visualizations allow the transfer of insight to the DigiIN project and the case organization. The development of less laborious and commitment-demanding research methods offering diverse ways to participate and testing of the recommended customer’s competence- and resource -based approach to service development need further research. Keywords: Social innovation, customer competencies and resources, service design, digital inclusio