A wide range of service science related courses, undergraduate, and masters degree programs exist at universities around the world.
For example, Paul Maglio’s service science course at UC Merced [1].
Service science is integrated into service programs with many different names and was defined in US Congress America COMPETES Act in 2007 [2]
Service operations, service systems engineering, service design and service marketing programs also teach about service science [3].
IBM compiled a list of 500+ programs in 2009, and then stopped tracking them [4].
ISSIP could go after tracking and promoting the development of these programs again [5].
Both the growth of the service sector and online service (platform economy) are increasing demand for service science programs, courses, and degree programs. The demand for service science is driven by both economic growth and technological innovation.
Service innovation continues to be technology-driven, and truly aiming for enterprise transformation (digital transformation, every person with 100 digital workers to command), not simply enterprise automation [6].
Nevertheless, digital age service innovation is most transformative when institutions and business models change according to a Service-Dominant Logic world view or lens; thus allowing people to see the world differently, both its ecosystem opportunities and challenges [7].
Service system entities are responsible entities (such as people, families, businesses, universities, cities, regional governments). Being responsible means becoming more conscious and explicit about learning investments. All responsible entities are constantly learning (AKA “upskilling”) by tacitly investing in exploration (doing things in new ways) and exploitation (doing things in habitual, entrenched, routine ways) [8].
The practice of service science is the process of building a Service Innovation Roadmap (SIR) for each entity. A SIR summarizes a responsible entities’ learning investments, or plan for “upskilling” [9].
A SIR is a practical thing – a kind of Business Model Canvas for learning investments that responsible service system entities make. Furthermore, we divide the types of investment into three parts (1) Run (individual habits, enterprise routine operations), (2) Transform (copy best strategies from other entities, largely by finding high performing individual role models and/or enterprise competitors and following in their strategic footsteps or path), (3) Innovate (invent your own new best strategy or best practice) [10].
The tool of service science is complexity economics; modeling entities and their changing strategies. Complexity economics models and runs simulations to see what possible futures might exist, when strategic interactions are driving change. Policy can then be invented to make some possible futures more likely than others. However, because entities change their strategies as they are interacting, predicting the future is not possible [11].
References
[1] UC Merced – https://ssha.ucmerced.edu/academics/undergraduate-programs/minors/service-science
[2] America COMPETES ACT! https://www.congress.gov/110/plaws/publ69/PLAW-110publ69.pdf
SERVICE SCIENCE DEFINED.—In this section, the term ‘‘service science’’ means curricula, training, and research programs that are designed to teach individuals to apply scientific, engineering, and management disciplines that integrate elements of computer science, operations research, industrial engineering, business strategy, management sciences, and social and legal sciences, in order to encourage innovation in how organizations create value for customers and shareholders that could not be achieved through such disciplines working in isolation.
[3] NUS Service Marketing – https://bizfaculty.nus.edu.sg/faculty-details/?profId=103 – Service Marketing, Prof. Jochen Wirtz (NUS, Singapore) has one of the top textbooks -Services Marketing – People, Technology, Strategy (World Scientific, 8th edition, 2016)
[4] SSME Wikipedia article history section lists some tracked by IBM – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_science,_management_and_engineering
[5] Proposed ISSIP initiative – https://service-science.info/archives/5197
[6] Schwarz S, Durst C, Bodendorf F (2012) Service Innovation-A Roadmap for Practitioners. Service Science and Management Research. 2012 Dec 1;1(1):8-16. URL: https://www.academia.edu/27930617/Service_Innovation_A_Roadmap_for_Practitioners?auto=download&email_work_card=download-paper
Roose K (2021) The robots are coming for Phil in accounting. New York Times March 6, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET. URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/06/business/the-robots-are-coming-for-phil-in-accounting.html
New York Times “The robots coming for Phil in accounting” … “Workers with college degrees and specialized training once felt relatively safe from automation. They aren’t.” … “Jason Kingdon, the chief executive of the R.P.A. firm Blue Prism, speaks in the softened vernacular of displacement too. He refers to his company’s bots as “digital workers,” and he explained that the economic shock of the pandemic had “massively raised awareness” among executives about the variety of work that no longer requires human involvement.”… “A digital worker,” he said, “can be scaled in a vastly more flexible way.”
Rouse WB, Spohrer JC(2018) Automating versus augmenting intelligence, Journal of Enterprise Transformation. URL: DOI: 10.1080/19488289.2018.1424059
[7] Peters C, Maglio P, Badinelli R, Harmon RR, Maull R, Spohrer JC, Tuunanen T, Vargo SL, Welser JJ, Demirkan H, Griffith TL, Moghaddam Y (2016) Emerging digital frontiers for service innovation. Communications of the Association for Information Systems: CAIS. 2016;1(39):online. URL: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/248801/1/JML_565.pdf
Barrett M, Davidson E, Prabhu J, Vargo SL (2015) Service innovation in the digital age. MIS quarterly. 2015 Mar 1;39(1):135-54. URL: https://aspace.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/266997/MISQ-paper.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Vargo SL, Lusch RF. Institutions and axioms: an extension and update of service-dominant logic. Journal of the Academy of marketing Science. 2016 Jan 1;44(1):5-23. URL: http://ww.w.sdlogic.net/uploads/3/4/0/3/34033484/vargo_lusch_2016_jams.pdf
Akaka MA, Koskela-Huotari K, Vargo SL (2019) Further advancing service science with service-dominant logic: Service ecosystems, institutions, and their implications for innovation. InHandbook of Service Science, Volume II 2019 (pp. 641-659). Springer, Cham.
[8] March JG (1991) Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organization science. 1991 Feb;2(1):71-87. URL: http://www-management.wharton.upenn.edu/pennings/documents/March_1991_exploration_exploitation.pdf
[9] Service Innovation Roadmaps (SIR) initially described in the Cambridge report – IfM & IBM (2010)
IfM & IBM (2010) Succeeding through Service Innovation. IfM (Institute for Manufacturing, Cambridge University) URL: https://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/uploads/Resources/Reports/080428cambridge_ssme_whitepaper.pdf
Practically speaking, a Service Innovation Roadmap (SIR) is a business model canvas for upskilling, or more technically the Run-Transform-and-Innovate investments in learning made tacitly or explicitly by a responsible service system entity. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Model_Canvas
World Economic Forum reports on Upskilling and Skills
WEF Upskilling for shared prosperity – https://www.weforum.org/reports/upskilling-for-shared-prosperity
WEF Standard Language for Skills – http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Skills_Taxonomy_2021.pdf
[10] Moore GA (2011) Escape Velocity: Free Your Companies Future From the Pull of the Past. Harper Business. URL: https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Velocity-Free-Companys-Future/dp/0062040898
IBM’s approach to Run-Transform-Innovate used from 2000-2010 is documented in Sanford and Taylor (2006)
Sanford LS, Taylor D (2006) Let go to grow: Escaping the commodity trap. Pearson Education. URL: https://www.amazon.com/Let-Go-Grow-Escaping-Commodity-ebook/dp/B004V9O7U0/
The way families and individuals can find a role model and succeed is documented well in the Hunter Hastings podcast with Maurico Miller – who also wrote a book on the topic.
Hastings H and Miller M (2021) Mauricio Miller: Entrepreneurship as the Path Upwards from Anywhere, for Anyone. Economics for Business Apple Podcast Feb 22, 2021 URL: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/economics-for-business/id1453233518
Miller ML (2017) The Alternative: Most of what you believe about poverty is wrong. Lulu Publishing Service. URL: https://www.amazon.com/Alternative-Believe-About-Poverty-Wrong/dp/1483472256
[11] Arthur WB (2021) Foundations of complexity economics. Nat Rev Phys (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-020-00273-3