Service literature has recognized the important role of customers' characteristics for successful innovation and is increasingly emphasizing the contribution of lead users. However, few studies have analyzed this issue with reference to advertising and other creative services, especially because of the difficulties in defining innovation in these industries, by capturing its complex nature. Through a large-scale survey on European advertising agencies, we provide empirical evidence of a multidimensional nature of innovation in these services, which can be better promoted by clients embodying some attributes rather than others. Indeed, our results identify three clusters, which differ for the clients' innovation enabling characteristics and their potential roles in promoting agency's innovation: the Dominant lead users; the Expert lead users; the Ordinary clients. We acknowledge the role of lead users in advertising and contribute to literature highlighting when they can be conducive to agency's innovation or be detrimental to it.

This paper aims at understanding the role of clients in the innovation of Creativity- Intensive Business Services (CIBS), namely advertising services, to provide useful managerial indications for the proactive management of the collaboration with clients for the purpose of innovation. We adopt a multi-stage approach. Firstly, we propose a conceptual multidimensional framework by combining three streams of research: a) research on customer involvement in New Service Development; b) service innovation studies with specific regard to CIBS; c) literature on business relationships marketing. Secondly, we refine such framework through an exploratory qualitative analysis based on a case study of a successful advertising agency. Thirdly, we undertake a large-scale survey of European advertising agencies. Our preliminary findings provide empirical evidence to the hidden and multidimensional nature of CIBS' innovation, and contribute to advance the understanding of the concept of "soft innovation" in creative services. Results also suggest that efforts to improve the interaction and collaborative work practices with clients are conducive to changes in other technological as well as non-technological dimensions. Moreover, the empirical analysis provides indications on additional innovation enabling characteristics of clients and on their potential roles as catalyst and co-developer of innovation.