Abstract:Many consulting firms and research institutions have started providing consultancy services for service innovations. However, academic research has not kept pace with rapidly changing developments in consulting businesses. This study evaluated all known methods currently used in service innovation consulting, and analyzed the actual practices of service innovation consulting to clarify trends in service innovation. Methods are evaluated by their strategy orientation and divergence orientation, and then classified according to a proposed general service innovation consulting framework. The findings of this study indicate that the current focus of service innovation consulting is: customer needs discovery. However, an integrated service innovation methodology covering customer needs discovery, market discovery, idea generation, strategy formulation, service engineering, and simulation/pilot is urgently needed.