Megatrends are deep-set trajectories of change that will reshape the landscape over the next few decades. Megatrends herald both challenges and opportunities. With the ever growing interest among business leaders and academics into global value chains or GVCs, this reference work fills in the gap in existing literature by portraying the current state of play of GVCs and offering an analysis of the megatrends in 3-D printing, smart specialisation, emerging technology enabled services, data analytics targeted at micro multinationals, start-up entrepreneurs, public sector and middle markets. The first sections are essentially intradisciplinary in character, seeking to explore historical aspects of GVCs. The sections cover the discipline of operations and supply chain management, the history of emerging supply chain technologies, impact of interfirm collaboration and theory and practice across sectors, technologies and economies. The final section assumes a more interdisciplinary approach and examines various topics by industry sector where operations and supply chain interfaces with the economy, society, culture, and politics. This comprehensive handbook provides a timely analysis of leading edge global practices in one volume.

This book provides a conceptual framework of global value chains, flexibility and sustainability, supported by research projects, case applications and models in various related areas organized into three parts. In the first part of the book, various authors discuss how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of global value chains through various types of analyses. While the focus is on cluster management, and mergers and joint ventures, the legal aspects of control and liability concerning the integration of value chains, is also examined in one of the contributions. The second part includes chapters concerning ‘Strategy and Flexibility’. Strategies concern topics such as inventory management, talent management, strategic alignment, decision making, behavioural change and HR systems. The third and final part of the volume concerns the topic of ‘Sustainability’, wherein the contributions focus on various initiatives intended to promote sustainability across respective value chains bearing in mind the concept of flexibility. The book is a valuable resource for a varied audience, ranging from management students and researchers, to practicing business managers, as well as for professional institutions, consultants, and corporate organizations.

Guest Editor

Bringing together some of the world’s leading thinkers, academics and professionals to provide practitioners, students and academicians with comprehensive insights into implementing effective service innovation. This book presents service innovation holistically and systemically across various service areas, including health, education, tourism, hospitality, telecommunications, and retail. It addresses contemporary issues through conceptual and applied contributions across industry, academia, and government, providing insights for improved practice and policy making. Featuring cutting-edge research contributions, practical examples, implementations and a select number of case studies across several growth service industries, this book also includes examples of failed service innovation attempts in order to demonstrate a balanced view of the topic and to make clear the pitfalls to be avoided. Culminating in a suggested step-by-step guide to enable service organization’s managers to understand and implement the concepts of service innovation and manage its evolutionary processes effectively, this book will prove a valuable resource to a wide reaching audience including researchers, practitioners, managers, and students who aspire to create a deeper scientific foundation for service design and engineering, service experience and marketing, and service management and innovation. Includes endorsements from professionals in the field of service innovation.