Abstract
The growth of the global service economy has led to a dramatic increase in our daily interactions with highly specialized service systems. Service (or value-cocreation) interactions are both frequent and diverse, and may include retail, financial, healthcare, education, on-line, communications, technical support, entertainment, transportation, legal, professional, government, or many other types of specialized interactions. And yet surprisingly few students graduating from universities have studied anything about service or service systems. Service Science, Management, Engineering, and Design (SSMED), or service science for short, is an emerging discipline aimed at understanding service and innovating service systems. This article sketches an outline and provides an extensive, yet preliminary, set of references to provoke discussions about the interdisciplinary nature of SSMED. One difficult challenge remaining is to integrate multiple disciplines to create a new and unique service science.
TopTheoretical And Practical Foundations
The emerging discipline of Service Science, Management, Engineering, and Design (SSMED) or service science, for short, is outlined in this article (IBM Research 2004; Chesbrough, 2005; Horn, 2005; Chesbrough & Spohrer, 2006; Hidaka, 2006; Monahan, Pym, Taylor, Tofts, & Yearworth 2006; Spohrer, Maglio, Bailey, & Gruhl, 2007; IfM & IBM, 2008; Spohrer & Maglio, 2008). This section provides some of the key theoretical and practical foundations of service science. What is truly new and unique about service science? Haven’t people been doing service research for over thirty years? What’s changed? The next section provides the primary connections to existing disciplines. How does service science relate to existing academic disciplines? Does every service scientist need to know about all these disciplines?
How is service science changing and being changed by these disciplines? The last section provides the primary connections to existing professions. How does service science relate to existing professions? Which professions are likely to benefit from the rise of service science?