Service innovation is regarded as a recipe for the growth of firms and industries. To explore the role and the importance of information technology (IT) in this issue, this study pays its attention to those SMEs that target on the field of wholesale, retail and franchises and that applied sponsorships successfully from ASSTD program. Content analysis and statistic analysis are applied as research methods, with its focus on the fol-lowing topics: (1) What are the common characteristics identified from service innova-tion taken by those Taiwanese SMEs? (2) What are the relationships among service in-novation strategy, goal setting, and the outcome? (3) Whether the adoption and selection of new IT is key for successful service innovation? And (4) Do SMEs with different features tend to adopt different IT applications and strategies for service innovation?
Based on our findings, the following suggestions and conclusions are made. First of all, SMEs tend to apply multi-faceted approach, target on existing customers and markets, and have their focus on the improvement in revenue and customer satisfaction when shaping service innovation projects. Besides, the key for shaping successful ser-vice innovation lies not in IT selection but in customer-centric strategic thinking. Finally, IT selection itself is not the first issue to be dealt with, while it is one of the most im-portant enablers.
