Purpose: Innovation practices that are client-centric or open paradoxically require simultaneously increased individual autonomy as well as increased managerial control to guarantee alignment between on-going activities and organizational goals. Innovation management theory emphasizes management control and explicit innovation strategies as prerequisites for innovation performance, while theory on service innovation emphasizes individual autonomy and incentives to foster open innovations. In this paper we explore this tension by addressing the research question: How are innovation practices incentivized and controlled to ensure sustained innovation performance? Design/methodology/approach: We follow an explorative research design involving 25 semi structured interviews within five large scale-intensive service firms. Scale-intensive service firms are strategically sampled for this study because these firms experience tension between open service innovation characteristics and efforts to standardize. Originality/value: We show how innovation practices transcend the individual level and by and large are collective efforts that also involve the mobilization of external resources. Incentives observed have an effect on individual behaviour while performance measures to a larger degree cater to the collective level. We present two propositions for further empirical investigation. Practical implications: The findings suggest that individualized incentives do not suffice to motivate, mobilize and direct the required collaboration and collective effort needed to ensure sustained innovation performance.