Challenges of measuring service productivity in innovative, knowledge-intensive business services

The productivity of services has recently become an intensively researched topic, but the measurement concepts developed up to now are very abstract and aimed at services in general. In this paper, a catalogue of requirements to measure and control the productivity of innovative, knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) will be developed. Existing concepts of measuring productivity in services will be assessed based on these requirements. Strengths and weaknesses of the concepts will be identified and serve as a basis for developing a productivity-measurement concept for innovative and KIBS in further research.