The quest for the ideal service through collaborative innovation in a public business model with customer stewardship The case of an Ivorian university hospital

Providing an efficient public service increasingly requires innovation that can take a collaborative form, by involving the clients/patients themselves. Thus, in hospitals, clients/patients who have long been considered captive are now being asked to participate and contribute their experiences. By mobilizing stewardship theory, this article proposes to understand how an ideal quality service can be addressed through cultural effectiveness in a business model. The empirical investigation is carried out with patients in a university hospital in Ivory Coast. The results show that stewardship clients envision the ideal service with the cultural effectiveness attributes of change, team, empowerment, integration and accountability. The surgical service, closer to the ideal service, appears to be an example of collaborative innovation for the emergency and maternity services.