This analytical literature review suggests that service innovation literature may provide important insights that help businesses and other stakeholders to utilize the innovation potential related to smart grids in more efficient ways. Based on the 45 reviewed articles we present insights that may facilitate further progress in the emerging smart grid research. These insights are then integrated into the theoretical and conceptual discussions in smart grid research. Based on these discussions, we propose a number of tentative research themes and questions for future research. Furthermore, this paper attempts to enhance and to support the dialogue between smart grid and service innovation research domains, which seems to be in its infancy.