Once a service - any service - is launched, the most important question for service managers becomes: how can we attract more customers, satisfy them and keep them? In other words: how can we best improve our service offer, while optimally using our limited resources? Each of the well-crafted articles in this special issue investigates an innovation related issue in service management, trying to answer this question in one way or another. In answering the question, some authors or author teams clearly have more general and academic ambitions, while others write to directly help decision-makers in a specific service sector to make better service innovation decisions.