Abstract:

Education can be understood as service. This article approaches development of higher education from two perspectives: from the services innovation perspective and from the educational development perspective. The purpose of this article is to contrast characteristics of services development and educational development in the context of developing higher education. Most of the literature dealing with planning and developing education is based on pedagogic theories. Indeed, there is a clear need to contrast the principles of development of higher education with principles of service development. This article is based on an extensive literature analysis on both services innovation theories and pedagogic theories on educational development. First, this article discusses the theoretical grounds and principles of service development and innovation. The literature analysis focuses on the special characteristics of service innovation, service development process, as well as service blueprinting. Next, it discusses development of higher education. This includes the literature analysis of goals, critical issues, as well as the development process of higher education. It also provides a case example of a development process. After that, this article contrast characteristics of services development and educational development in the context of developing higher education. It contrasts various characteristics related to challenges, goal setting, critical issues, process, and success factors. After that, the final conclusions are drawn.

Keywords:

Service development, service innovation, educational development, Higher Education development.