Annually and bi-annually, there are a number of service innovation related conferences, some are sponsored by ISSIP or have ISSIP Ambassadors who help lead and/or organize sessions at the conferences.
HICSS: Deadlines Feb 12 for mini-tracks and June 15 for papers. Estimated 1000 attendees. Typically several service science and service innovation friendly mini-tracks. Location Hawaii USA. If interested contact ISSIP Ambassador Haluk Demirkan , Paul Maglio, or Terri Griffith. See past best paper awards here.
AHFE HSSE: Location USA and global location (occasionally). Estimated 2000 attendees at AHFE, and 60 attendees at HSSE. If interested contact ISSIP Ambassadors Christine Leitner or Clara Bassano. See past best paper award here.
ISM: Location Europe. Estimated 200 attendees. If interested contact ISSIP Ambassador Antonio Podavano. See past best paper awards here.
Frontiers in Service: USA and global locations (occasionally). Estimated 200-300 attendees. Top presentations at this conference, sometimes lead to papers in the Journal of Service Research (JSR). If interested in JSR, please contact ISSIP Ambassador Ming-Hui Huang.
Annually, there are a a number of service innovation awards.
ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award: Deadline Feb 28, 2022. “…. to a company or organizations that has … deployed a new service that, in the judgment of the ISSIP Award Committee, is the most innovative of all of the submissions for that year with impact to business, society, and innovation.” Runners up also are recognized with ISSIP Badge awards, and invited to provide a presentation to the ISSIP community about the innovation.
IISE Outstanding Innovation in Service Systems Award: Deadline March 2, 2022. “The Award recognizes organizations for the development of innovative techniques to improve the performance of service industries. Each of the selected finalists will receive two complimentary conference registrations. Finalists are required to provide follow-up webinars sponsored by the Council on Industrial and Systems Engineering (CISE) for members and customers of IISE for supporting world-wide dissemination of such innovations across the ISE profession.”
As part of my reading and thinking this morning, ServCollab was top of mind, and the scale of the grand challenge problems that community of practice is trying to tackle (service ecosystem health, climate change, refugee service experience, inclusion, etc.), as well as synergies and collaboration opportunities with the ISSIP community. For those interested, it is easy and free to join both ServCollab and ISSIP, since they are volunteer communities. As volunteer communities, my recommendation is to join while recalling what John F. Kennedy wisely said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Both the ServCollab and ISSIP as communities of practice focus on “service” as the central concept of human experience (HX) and connected to all aspects of business and societal interactions, change, and innovation. ServCollab as a service research community initiative has a focus on service design and action research methods to bring about change in wellbeing of people and planet. ISSIP as a professional association sponsored by companies has a focus on professional development and capability building of members on the topic of service innovations.
“The residue of outdated definitions of service have left many service professionals confused about the true nature of service and the broad range of disciplines that have an interest in this field. The definition of the word “service” has undergone a transformation within the last decade.” P. 1.
“Therefore, we define service as the application of knowledge to co-create value, and service science as the study of diverse, interconnected, complex “human-centered value-cocreation systems” in business and society.” P. 1.
Boenigk S, Fisk R, Kabadayi S, Alkire L, Cheung L, Corus C, Finsterwalder J, Kreimer AA, Luca N, Omeira M, Paul P, Santos MF, Smidt N (2021) Rethinking service systems and public policy: a transformative refugee service experience framework. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. 2021 Apr;40(2):165-83. URL: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/170226/1/Rethinking_refugees_services_accepted_manuscript.pdf
“The global refugee crisis is a complex humanitarian problem. Service researchers can assist in solving this crisis because refugees are immersed in complex human service systems. Drawing on marketing, sociology, transformative service, and consumer research literature, this study develops a Transformative Refugee Service Experience Framework to enable researchers, service actors, and public policy makers to navigate the challenges faced throughout a refugee’s service journey. The primary dimensions of this framework encompass the spectrum from hostile to hospitable refugee service systems and the resulting suffering or well- being in refugees’ experiences. The authors conceptualize this at three refugee service journey phases (entry, transition, and exit) and at three refugee service system levels (macro, meso, and micro) of analysis. The framework is supported by brief examples from a range of service-related refugee contexts as well as a Web Appendix with additional cases. Moreover, the authors derive a comprehensive research agenda from the framework, with detailed research questions for public policy and (service) marketing researchers. Managerial directions are provided to increase awareness of refugee service problems; stimulate productive interactions; and improve collaboration among public and nonprofit organizations, private service providers, and refugees. Finally, this work provides a vision for creating hospitable refugee service systems.” P. 165.
“Second, research in several disciplines, such as philosophy (Sabine 1916), social sciences (Fixsen et al. 2013; Safouane 2017), economics (Carmeli 2007), law (Floss 2006), informa- tion and communication technology (Beghtol 2003; Muter et al. 1993), medicine, health care (Okie 2007; Simelela and Venter 2014), biological sciences (Miller and Bohannan 2019), and politics (McFadyen 2016; Silver, Keeper, and MacKenzie 2005), has taken a system view and discussed hospitable versus hostile systems.” P. 167.
“Restrictions such as legal, political, or resource constraints can prevent actors in the system from cocreating well-being with actors located in the same system, with those entering the system, or with actors outside the system (Kuppelwieser and Finsterwalder 2016). Certain political movements and ideologies that cite alleged risks to security due to the arrival of refugees might prevent them from entering in the first place (Osborne 2019). Derrida (2000) argues that restrictions change the pure nature of hospitality, such that systems might become hostile, at least in part, by imposing long waiting times for refugees to access services or be legally admitted to the new service system. This built- in “hostipitality” (Derrida 2000, p. 3) relates to “hospitality toward the undesirable guest,” and reflects the “fear of the other abusing the system (and the host state) [and] is resulting in stringent policies that are detrimentally impacting on those individuals seeking sanctuary” (McFadyen 2016, pp. 600, 614).” P. 172.
“Introduction: Poverty is truly a wicked problem with no easy solutions. Every country has large numbers of citizens trapped in poverty, which led the United Nations (2015) to boldly declare that ending poverty is their Number 1 Sustainable Development Goal. When so many people in so many countries live in multi-generational poverty, the service systems of human society are failing to deliver adequate basic services. Such basic service systems include health, education, public safety, transportation, energy, sanitation, and such life support services as food, water, and shelter. Poverty is difficult to reduce because the service systems of human society are complex and interrelated. Further, the poor are routinely the victims of crime and corruption, which makes their plight all the more tragic. Our service research community has the ability to help reduce poverty. There is no longer any excuse for hesitation or inaction. The time has come for our service research community to broaden its research efforts to include the service needs of the majority of humanity who are still trapped in poverty.” P.44.
“The BoP: service problems and opportunities: BoP has become the common description for the approximately two thirds of the world’s population who live on the equivalent of less than nine US Dollars per day (Arnold and Valentin, 2013). For these impoverished people, limited access to basic services and inadequate service systems leave them mired in poverty. These service problems include limited or no access to health care, education, transportation, and electricity; no sanitation; insufficient or poor quality food; no clean drinking water; and no adequate housing.” P. 45.
“Introduction: Unfair service systems have been common across human history and remain as such in many modern service experiences. Further, unfairness has been documented in every human society. This unfairness stems from customers often lacking access to services, systemic bias, customer vulnerability and discrimination during service interactions. This paper focuses on these forms of unfairness and labels them as “service exclusion.” Service exclusion occurs when services (service providers or service systems) deliberately or unintentionally fail to include or to adequately serve customers in a fair manner… This situation calls for urgent attention and action at all levels. To offset these problems, the authors propose the concept of “service inclusion,” which refers to an egalitarian system that provides customers (e.g. consumers, clients, patrons, citizens, patients and guests) with fair access to a service, fair treatment during a service and fair opportunity to exit a service. With this definition, the authors advance a criterion that represents a global service system standard for service relationships and interactions. The logic for this concept of service inclusion is founded on the understanding that the concept of universal human rights was invented in the eighteenth century (Hunt, 2007) and that it is steadily advancing.” P. 835.
“Abstract: Society is at a crossroads. Interconnected systems, radical transparency, and rapidly increasing sophistication in skills, communications, and technologies provide a unique context for fostering social innovation at a planetary scale. We argue that unprece- dented rates of systemic social change are possible for co-creating a future where humans and all life can thrive. Yet, this requires innovation in the conceptions, practice, teaching, and researching of social innovation itself to reimagine what it is and can be. As a multidisciplinary group of academics, practitioners, and educators, we integrate our perspectives on social innovation and humanistic management to suggest the notion of systemic social innovation. We introduce the concept of “trans- formative collaboration” as central to facilitating systemic social innovation and propose a multilevel model for accelerating systems change. We then develop an integrated framework for conceptualizing systemic social innovation. Four levels of social impact are identified, and these levels are bracketed with a call for transforming individual consciousness at the micro level and new collective mindsets at the macro level. Blooom is presented as a case study to illustrate transformative collaboration, demonstrate the role of mindset shift in practice, and introduce four key ingredients to systemic social innovation. Finally, a call to action is issued for social innovation practice, teaching, and research. Most importantly, we seek to inspire and accelerate systemic social innovation that enables the flourishing of every human being and all life on earth.” P. 191.
“Transformative Collaboration: In this article, we propose that the highest form of collaboration should be called “transformative collaboration,” which occurs when all participants are able to make contributions at their full human potential. It is the liberation of human potential through collaboration that is transformative. We propose three key principles as central to the notion of transformative collaboration: equality and inclusion, personal consciousness, and creativity and innovation.” P. 199.
“As the service research field has evolved, our understanding of the nature of service has shifted from being peripheral to human experience (HX) to becoming central to HX. One aspect of this new centrality of service has been the expansion of research topics beyond dyadic service encounters (Bitner et al., 1990) to service systems (Maglio et al., 2009) and then to service ecosystems (Akaka and Vargo, 2015). A second aspect is the emergence of the transformative service research (TSR) movement, which has raised the aspirations of the service research field to improving human well-being (Anderson et al., 2013) and reducing its suffering (Nasr and Fisk, 2019). There is great power and potential in this new understanding of the central role of service in human life. Fundamentally, the centrality of service to HX means that the greatest potential of the service research field is yet to be explored and discovered. ServCollab was created to enable the service research field to elevate HX through service research collaborations.” P.616
“For the service research field to make major scientific advances and truly improve human well- being and reduce its suffering, it will require larger service research projects. Such projects will require that service researchers build large and inclusive project teams, sharpen their collaboration skills and hone their research tools for serving humanity. It will also require that service researchers create and share a service language that improves communication across the service research community (Fisk and Grove, 2010). Most importantly, it will require that service researchers develop service standards for properly serving humanity.” P. 616.
“What is ServCollab? ServCollab is a service research organization for diagnosing and treating humanity’s service system problems (poverty, ignorance, disease, etc.).” P. 616.
“Why focus on collaboration? As a social species, human interactions are learned behaviors that are essential for human existence. Table 1 shows our conceptualization of four categories of human interaction: conflict, competition, cooperation and collaboration. Conflict and competition are common interactions that are chronicled widely in human history. Conflict starts as an argument but can escalate into a war. Competition refers to seeking the same resources through a rules- based contest. Both conflict and competition result in winners seeking dominance over the losers. Such dominance is associated with the origination of the word service. Service is derived from the Latin word “servus” (Merriam-Webster.com 2020), which means slave or servant. Cooperation and collaboration have been less prominently chronicled by historians. Cooperation is participatory interaction but not always voluntary interaction. Cooperation can be coerced by law, by bullying or by physical force. As such, cooperation can lead to unequal and unjust outcomes, whereas one party could be benefiting at the expense of the other. Collaboration is distinguished by shared intentionality (Angus and Newton, 2015). Collaborative interactions occur when people eagerly engage in working with each other. Anthropologists (Tomasello et al., 2012) have characterized the evolution of our species in prehistoric times as mutualistic collaboration driven by interdependence. Such mutualistic collaboration began with the first service systems (families) and continued with the steady evolution in sophistication of human service systems from families, to tribes, to villages, to cities and to nations (Fisk, 2009; Fisk and Grove, 2010).” P. 617.
“Human experience (HX): a broader perspective on serving humanity When Vargo and Lusch (2004) introduced service-dominant logic (S-D logic), it was a key milestone in the broadening of thinking about service. They argued that service is fundamental to all economic and social exchange. This launched many service researchers on a path of rethinking the foundations of the service research field, which included expanding from the original focus on service encounters (Bitner et al., 1990) to service systems (Maglio et al., 2009) and then to service ecosystems (Akaka and Vargo, 2015; Lusch and Vargo, 2014).”
“Designing new service solutions to serve humanity Service design can be defined as a human-centered, holistic, creative and iterative approach to service innovation (Meroni and Sangiorgi, 2011), rooted in design as changing existing situations into preferred futures (Simon, 1969). ” P. 623.
“Service design takes a human-centered and participatory approach, designing for and with people, and can contribute to creating balanced solutions to uplift human service systems. Designing for people involves a sensemaking approach, viewed as a social construction of meaning focused on understanding how people experience and understand the world around them and reflecting this sensemaking in the solutions being developed (Cipolla and Reynoso, 2017). Designing with people reflects a participatory approach where people are considered true experts in domains of experience such as living or working, and as such they are actively involved as cocreators in the design process, while the designer plays a facilitator role (Sanders, 2008). ” P. 623.
“Designing service for transformation. The action-oriented and participatory approach to service design can also generate transformative value for uplifting changes in individual and collective well-being (Blocker and Barrios, 2015). This transformative service design approach seeks to create not only new service solutions but also the platforms and capacities for ongoing and lasting change (Sangiorgi et al., 2019). Service design can, therefore, promote the change of ingrained norms, rules and beliefs of different system actors, such as fostering more human-centered and participatory approaches in health care and promoting ecosystem innovation through institutional change (Vink et al., 2019). ” P. 624.
“Action research: Action research seeks transformative change through simultaneously conducting research and seeking action. There are different types of action research, but most are enacted through an explicit set of social values that align with the principles of ServCollab. These values translate into a process of inquiry with the following characteristics: (1) “Democratic – enabling the participation of all people. (2) Equitable – acknowledging people’s equality of worth. (3) Liberating – providing freedom from oppressive, debilitating conditions. (4) Life enhancing – enabling the expression of people’s full human potential.” (Stringer, 1999, pp. 9–10). Critical Participatory Action Research (Critical PAR) is an especially fitting type of action research, which Michelle Fine describes in her appropriately titled book, Just Research in Contentious Times: Widening the Methodological Imagination (2018a).” P.624.
“Community Advisory Boards (CABs) can provide a moral compass for some of the ethical dilemmas and issues raised by Critical PAR. CABs can be created for specific projects or they can become permanent entities for certain communities. CABs can assess risks and benefits to the community of study participation; power between community, academic and other collaborators; ownership of data; authorship; transparency; accountability; use of findings and by whom; among other issues (Guishard, 2015). ServCollab seeks to support projects adopting service design and Critical PAR as research approaches. This support includes sharing expertise, organizing workshops, searching for funding, research access, following responsible research standards and avoiding research pitfalls.” P. 626.
Fisk RP (2020) How Serving Each Other Can Save Humanity. TEDx Texas State University. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-V1qbry6aI Different, but also see: Grant H (2019) How To Ask For Help – And Get a “Yes”. TED Salon: Brightline Initiative. URL: https://www.ted.com/talks/heidi_grant_how_to_ask_for_help_and_get_a_yes
“Abstract. Events in the year 2020 threw human service systems into chaotic states, threat- ening peoples’ lives and livelihoods. Before 2020, there were many profound challenges to human life that had been well documented by efforts such as the United Nations Sustain- able Development Goals. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to be a “last straw” crisis that has destabilized modern human civilization. This article diagnoses various crises of human service systems (e.g., COVID-19, inequality, and climate change) and proposes the meta- phor of service ecosystem health for reimagining service science in a postpandemic world. Service ecosystem health is defined as the interdependent state of private, public, and plan- etary well-being necessary for sustaining life. This article reimagines service science, broad- ens transformative service research, builds the service ecosystem health metaphor, outlines the Goldilocks Civilization thought experiment, and explores designing for a Goldilocks civilization. Because service is for humans, the ultimate objective is to elevate service sci- ence to uplift human well-being.” P. 194.
“We define service ecosystem health as the interde- pendent state of private, public, and planetary well- being necessary for sustaining life. The first section of this article discusses reimagining service science. The second section discusses broaden- ing transformative service research (TSR). The third section builds the service ecosystem health metaphor through an interdisciplinary overview of public health, syndemic theory, human ecology, ecosystem health, and planetary health literatures. The fourth section de- scribes a Goldilocks civilization thought experiment that imagines what harmonizing the complex service ecosystem interactions between humans and between nature and humans might require. The final section proposes a service ecosystem design approach for cre- ating service science collaborations sufficiently robust to tackle the challenges of prototyping Goldilocks civi- lization solutions for service ecosystem health.” P. 195.
“We believe that service scientists should be at the forefront in proposing and developing collaborative systematic service innovations on behalf of our imperiled human ecology.” P. 201.
“Today, the world is at a conjuncture where issues of exclusion and inclusion are assuming new significance for both developed and developing countries. The imperative for social inclusion has blurred the distinction between these two stylized poles of development. Countries that used to be referred to as developed are grappling with issues of exclusion and inclusion perhaps more intensely today than they did a decade ago. And countries previously called developing are grappling with both old issues and new forms of exclusion thrown up by growth.”
Madni (2018) Transdisciplinary systems engineering.
Azad Madni‘s 2018 book on Transdisciplinary Systems Engineering is a seminal contribution to scholars of transdisciplinarity as well as to initiatives that aim to promote “transdisciplinary thinking” about complex socio-technical systems. A few extracts are provided below:
Our 21st Century World (Page 1): “The twenty-first century is already a century of disruptive innovation and ever-increasing complexity that is being fueled by hyper-connectivity and convergence among technologies and disciplines, respectively. According to the 2014 National Academy of Science (NAS) report on convergence, The key message of convergence, however, is that merging ideas, approaches, and technology from widely diverse fields of knowledge at a high level of integration is one crucial strategy for solving complex problems and addressing complex intellectual questions underlying emerging disciplines.“
Thinking About Change Propagation (Page 18): “A key aspect of the new mindset is understanding how change propagates in complex systems. The intent in this case is to understand the downstream impact of a “quick fix” that might solve an immediate problem only to surface later in the form of unintended consequences elsewhere in the system and displaced in time.”
21st Century Workforce Upskilling (Page 189): “As we look to the future, we have to expand engineering concepts and adapt engineering education for a twenty-first-century engineering workforce. The new breed of engineers will need to acquire a broader skillset. In an era that is being defined by disciplinary convergence, disruptive technologies, and new media delivery platforms, engineers will need a broader set of competencies with the profile being more π-shaped, rather than T-shaped. In other words, the engineer will need depth in a couple of areas (e.g., mechanical engineering and business), with breadth of knowledge in multiple areas. At the same time, academic institutions will have to revise and redefine traditional boundaries inherent in the way today’s departments and schools are organized. As important, industry will have to reimagine required competencies based on twenty-first-century systems and ongoing advances in disciplinary convergence. They will need to make sure that engineering education is aligned with these competencies.”
Exploiting Disciplinary Convergence (Page 193): “As technological advances continue and disciplinary convergence broadens and deepens, cross-disciplinary approaches will gradually become part of mainstream engineering and engineering education. Cross-disciplinary approaches, the center piece of transdisciplinary systems engineering, will introduce new perspectives, new insights, and occasionally new concepts into mainstream engineering making complex systems engineering problems tractable. In this book, I have provided examples of how transdisciplinary thinking can help explore, formalize, and exploit the synergy between engineering and other disciplines. This synergy is taking a variety of forms: enablement (engineering enables discipline X, or vice versa), amplification (engineering enhances or contributes to discipline X, or vice versa), fusion (engineering combines with another discipline X to create a new discipline), emergence (engineering and discipline X jointly produce a new concept), and integration (engineering and discipline X collectively solve a problem that neither could solve alone). As these synergies deepen and produce demonstrable successes, they will add to engineering education content that will be taught in traditional and virtual classrooms. Occasionally, these advances will attract entrepreneurs and investors with the potential of spawning entirely new industries.”
In sum, real-world problems do not respect disciplinary boundaries, and Madni’s book on transdisciplinary systems engineering helps explore convergence opportunities between traditional systems engineering and other converging disciplines. Among Madni’s many insights is the notion that technology convergence is a key force driving trandisciplinarity for engineering.
Mariotti (2021): Forging a new alliance between economics and engineering.
Another seminal work for historians of disciplinary evolution towards transdisciplinarity is the 2021 article by Sergio Mariotti titled “Forging a new alliance between economics and engineering” which provides an especially compelling micro-analysis of universities creating courses and degrees in the economics-engineering for/and/as nexus.
Transdisciplinary-oriented change – Abstract (Page 551): “Looking at the history of the intriguing relationships between the two disciplines, in this paper three paradigms for the economics–engineering nexus are identified—economics “for/and/as” engineering—and their dimensions are discussed. This investigation enables to infer possible disciplinary scenarios in relation to the contemporary and future society. The paper calls for a new “alliance à la Prigogine” between economics and engineering driven by a transdisciplinary-oriented change in the epistemology and methods of the two disciplines and in their way of being and interacting. The mission of the alliance is to restore a unified perspective of knowledge and putting the study of complexity in the foreground.”
Discipline trajectories (Page 554): “However, while the past was written in ink, the future is written in pencil: the evolution of disciplines is by no means a deterministic process and the different possible trajectories and the social factors selecting them must be understood and discussed.”
Evolution of the Economics-Engineering Nexus (For/And/As) in Table 1 (Page 555):
“Economics for engineering: An ancillary subset of economic concepts, methods, and tools at the service of project evaluation and decision making in the engineering-technological field.
Economics and engineering: Economics and engineering meet as peers, respecting the disciplinary singularities and the different cultures, but in a context of cross-fertilization and interdisciplinarity.
Economics as engineering: Economics adopts the engineering epistemology for market design and problem solving, through commonalities of language, methodology, and research organization.”
In sum, large investments in human capital development are increasingly being aimed at transdisciplinary-oriented change at universities.
Other disciplines?
More and more disciplines have their transdisciplinary pioneers. What other disciplines acknowledge the need for transdisciplinarity and are shifting in that direction?
Mechanical Engineering: Another seminal work is by a former Stanford professor Stephen Jay Kline. His 1995 book “The Conceptual Foundations of Multidisciplinary Thinking” also emphasizes the need for a framework that shows how disciplines connect and overlap, because as the socio-technical system design loop continues to accelerate, educators have an obligation to provide students with better models of the world that are “understandable, realistic, forward-looking, and whole.”
Social Sciences, Political Science, Economics and Public Policy: Using large amounts of computing power to represent agent-based models of actors interacting and adapting their strategies is a transdisciplinary approach being advocated by W. Brian Arthur. See his 2021 article in Nature Letters on “Foundations of Complexity Economics.” The work of Richard R. Nelson is also relevant to understanding Public Policy as a transdisciplinary effort, see for example his 1997 book titled “The Moon and Ghetto.”
Service Research (Service Operations, Service Marketing, Service Systems Engineering, Service Design, etc.): Service is a naturally transdisciplinary research area for business and society. For example, see the 2008 Cambridge University Institute for Manufacturing and IBM report on “Succeeding Through Service Innovation.” In the words of Roland Rust, one of the pioneers of the service research field, “The service research field is a big tent field.” Of course, as an emerging transdiscipline that studies service systems, service science is still in the early stages relative to faster evolving transdisciplines such as data science and design science.
Where is transdisciplinarity headed? Transdisciplinarity is a type of interaction between academic disciplines. Furthermore, transdisciplinarity is a type of interaction between disciplinary communities of practice viewed as a type of service system, seeking win-win value co-creation opportunities as they compete for collaborators and strive to achieve a more complete, holistic model of the world. Service in the AI era, both automated and augmented service work by scholars, educators, and professionals, will further accelerate the trend towards transdisciplinarity. The acceleration will go into over-drive as AI models are created for separate disciplines and merge into transdisciplinary versions of GPT-3 and Megatron Turing for scholarly tasks within all academic disciplines. Investments will increase because solving complex, urgent real-world problems demands transdisciplinary thinking.
References
Madni A (2018) Transdisciplinary Systems Engineering: Exploiting Convergence in a Hyper-Connected World. Springer.
Mariotti S (2021) Forging a new alliance between economics and engineering. Journal of Industrial and Business Economics 48:551–572.
HICSS-55 Minitrack: Case studies of Artificial Intelligence, Business Intelligence, Analytics Technologies for Industry Platforms
See agenda below
Thank-you all again – really enjoyed hosting the session on behalf of Maarit and Pekka.
1. Recording of our session posted to ISSIP.org YouTube – here. 2. Papers of our session – here. 3. Please plan to submit papers to HICSS in the future – so we can have fun in Hawaii together. 4. Please consider submitting your work for an ISSIP Award – here. 5. Please consider joining ISSIP – it’s free here – and we provide recognition for innovators – check our ISSIP blog here. 6. Slides I used today to introduce each presentation – here. 7. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn – here. Any questions or comments appreciated <spohrer@gmail.com>
Wednesday January 5, 2022
When:
Wed Jan 5th 5:00-6:30pm Finland Time, 4-5:30pm CET/ 10am-11:30am ET/ 7am-8:30am PT
Five Papers, with 10 minute recorded presentations + 5 minutes live Q&A
4:00pm CET/10:00amET/7:00am PT Session Co-Chair Welcome (1) Maarit Palo (IBM Finland) (2) Pekka Neittaanmaki (Jyvaskyla University, Finland) (3) Jim Spohrer (IBM USA, Retired; ISSIP.org)
4:05pm CET/10:05am ET/7:05am PT Paper 4199- An Innovative Approach to Modeling Aviation Safety Incidents.pdf (1) Donghui Shi (2) Shuai Cao (3) Jozef Zurada (4) Jian Guan
4:20pm CET/10:20am ET/7:20am PT Paper 3909 Utilizing Active Machine Learning for Quality Assurance- A Case Study of Virtual Car Renderings in the Automotive Industry.pdf (1) Patrick Hemmer (2) Niklas Kühl (3) Jakob Schoeffer
4:35pm CET/10:35am ET/7:35am PT Paper 3624- Automated Defect Detection of Screws in the Manufacturing Industry Using Convolutional Neural Networks.pdf (1) Johannes Breitenbach (2) Isabelle Eckert (3) Vanessa Mahal (4) Hermann Baumgartl (5) Ricardo Buettner
4:50pm CET/10:50am ET/7:50am PT Paper 3289 Investigating the Role of Technical and Process Quality in Chatbots- A Case Study from the Insurance Industry.pdf (1) Tommi Pirilä (2) Joni Salminen (3) Victoria-Sophie Osburg (4) Vignesh Yoganathan (5) Bernard J. Jansen
5:05pm CET/11:05am ET/8:05am PT Paper 3063 An Empiricial Study of Factors Affecting Language-Independent Models.pdf (1) Xiaotong Liu (2) Anbang Xu (3) Rama Akkiraju
5:20pm CET/11:20am ET/8:20am PT General discussion, and more Q&A
5:30pm CET/11:30am ET/8:30am PT Final thank-you to all and end
At the dawn of a golden age of service working from home, with same or next day delivery, online education, online doctor visits, individuals have an incentive to buy a great diversity of service and product offerings. Products render service when used in a context, so we focus on service and service innovations.
Some individuals, businesses, and nations have more money than others to benefit from service. Wealth matters when it comes to buying a high-quality service. Purchasing power of responsible entities (people, businesses, nations) varies tremendously even in this golden age we live in, with both billionaires as well as too many chronically under-served populations.
“Fewer than half of working-age Americans have any retirement savings, according to Census data for 2020.” Over the course of their lifetimes, a typical family can easily spend millions on service (70 years x $50K per year = $3.5M). If just 1% of that spending was invested as each purchase was being made, over the same average lifespan of those individuals, then much greater wealth would be achieved ($50K per year spending, with 1% monthly savings at 2% monthly compounding adds $70K for retirement spending or to pass on to heirs). Within four generations, the wealth and purchasing power of retirement age population as a whole would be nudged greater than it is today. Increased purchasing power drives higher-quality service innovations.
Automatic retirement investing is the key to making everyone a bit wealthier. For example, national central banks with a Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) could put in place retirement accounts for every person to facilitate a “buy2invest” program. Consider this – buying a cup of coffee or a fast food meal, could automatically add micro-shares of that company’s stock as well as micro-shares of an index fund to that individual’s central bank retirement account, in the total amount of 1% of the purchase price. If the purchase is made online, then a micro-share of the portal’s stock could also be added to the individual’s retirement account. Could these additions in the level of the retirement accounts happen when taxes are paid – that is a kind of service purchase? Yes, it could. Perhaps adding a few government bonds to the mix (age parameterized of course), as well as additional micro-shares of an index fund. Others have proposed alternative mechanisms. The great variety of alternative mechanisms being proposed suggests that this is a service innovation whose time has come.
How would such a service innovation be paid for? One approach would be to think of it as similar to a credit card fee. Credit cards are an example of a service innovation. Another approach, would be to fund it through quantitative easing, which central banks already do. Quantitative easing is an example of a service innovation as well. Loyalties programs are a service innovation, associated with buying. To learn about other proposed service innovations, you can read this book, or other books in the service systems innovation for business and society book collection.
In the current golden age of service, connecting buying to investing for all individuals is a service innovation whose time has come!
20211203 Educated population is key to success. Starting with kids who learn about budgets and civic responsibility – see First Root. I am often asked what is the most important skill for students to learn to prepare for a 21st century innovation career. My answer is not computer programming, data science, AI, or any of the STEM, or liberal arts skills and degrees, open source, etc. – as important and helpful as these can be… Instead, the next generation needs to learn about investing well and wisely, their time, effort, resources. First Root is a great startup company for getting students educated and prepared for a 21st century innovation careers.
20211203 Why should “buy2invest” be 1% and have micro-shares of an index fund and the stock of what is being purchased? JL Collins explains why index funds best. The stock of what is purchased is a twist on loyalty programs. Also, it helps ensure that the investment is going towards a service that people actually care about and use – grounding in reality of service for service exchanges as the foundation of a society improving service, which is the application of knowledge for mutual benefits.
* “Ukraine’s governing body passed a law concerning payment services that mentions the future CBDC as the “yet-to-be-launched electronic hryvnia,” which is the country’s national currency. The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has been exploring its own CBDC on the Stellar blockchain since 2018, and though it has not yet launched, it is still a consideration.” (ref)
Please be prepared to share interesting things you are currently reading/listening to/watching….
17:00 – 17:05: Welcome: Professor Tsvi Kuflik 17:05 – 17:10: Opening: Professor Alan Hartman
17:10 – 17:20: Professor Irit Hadar 17:20 – 18:00: Professor Avi Wigderson: Points, Lines and Computational Complexity 18:05 – 18:45: Professor Richard Paige: The Evolution of the Epsilon Model Management Platform
18:50 – 19:30: Dr. Jim Spohrer: Future of AI and Post- Pandemic Society: A Service Science Perspective
19:30 – 19:55: Faculty members 19:55 – 20:00: Closing: Alan
17:20 – 18:00
Professor Avi Wigderson, School of Mathematics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
Title: Points, Lines and Computational Complexity.
Abstract: I will talk about some results at the intersection of the research interests of Alan and myself. As it happens, results from combinatorial geometry and design theory can be extremely useful in computational complexity theory. I will state (and even prove) some old and new theorems on point-line configurations, and show how they help resolve some questions in coding theory and arithmetic complexity theory.
Bio: Avi Wigderson is an Israeli mathematician and computer scientist. He is the Herbert H. Maass Professor in the school of mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. His research interests include complexity theory, parallel algorithms, graph theory, cryptography, distributed computing, and neural networks. Professor Wigderson received the Abel Prize in 2021 for his work in theoretical computer science.
18:05 – 18:45
Professor Richard Paige, Director, McMaster Centre for Software Certification, Associate Chair (Research), Department of Computing and Software, McMaster University.
Title: The Evolution of the Epsilon Model Management Platform
Abstract: I will give a short overview of the evolution of the Epsilon platform for model management and Model-Driven Engineering, starting from its origins within the MODELWARE project, to its deployment in a variety of industrial settings today. As part of this journey I will touch on the connections between Epsilon’s open-source origins and the world of proprietary tools, and links with machine learning and natural language processing.
Bio: Richard Paige is the Joseph Ip Distinguished Engineering Professor at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, where he also directs the Centre for Software Certification. Previously he held the Chair of Enterprise Systems at the University of York, UK. He has published over 300 papers on software and systems engineering, with a particular focus on Model-Driven Engineering. He is on the editorial boards of Springer’s Software and Systems Modelling, and the Journal of Object Technology, and he is vice chair of the ACM/IEEE MoDELS Conference’s steering committee. He had the privilege of working with Alan Hartman in the MODELWARE and MODELPLEX European projects.
18:50 – 19:30
Dr. Jim Spohrer, Board of Directors, International Society of Service Innovation Professionals (ISSIP), and Former (Retired) Director, Cognitive Opentech Group (COG), IBM Research – Almaden.
Title: Future of AI and Post-Pandemic Society: A Service Science Perspective
Abstract: The 2020-2021 pandemic is accelerating the digital (information technologies) transformation of society, including online working, learning, playing and belonging. The future of AI will bring even greater acceleration and transformations. Service science predicts that in this transformation of business and society that competing for collaborators will increasingly shape outcomes. A decade-based (2020-2080) view of IT, AI, society, and service science is provided.
Bio: Jim Spohrer was most recently director of IBM’s open source Artificial Intelligence developer ecosystem effort. He led IBM Global University Programs, co-founded Almaden Service Research, and was CTO Venture Capital Group. After his MIT BS in Physics, he developed speech recognition systems at Verbex (Exxon) before receiving his Yale PhD in Computer Science/AI. In the 1990’s, he attained Apple Computers’ Distinguished Engineer Scientist and Technologist role for next generation learning platforms. With over ninety publications and nine patents, he received the AMA ServSIG Christopher Lovelock Career Contributions to the Service Discipline, Gummesson Service Research award, Vargo and Lusch Service-Dominant Logic award, Daniel Berg Service Systems award, and a PICMET Fellow for advancing service science.
This is the best book that I (Jim Spohrer) have read so far in 2021. If you want to be challenged to re-think people, this is THE book. It is a New York Times bestseller. If you have read Harari’s “Sapiens”, then Bregman’s “Humankind” is a next logical read. They both make you rethink what you think that you know about our species, about ourselves as people. Bregman’s “Humankind: A Hopeful History” forced me re-think what I thought I already knew about people in each of its eighteen chapters – multiple times! Ray Fisk recommended this book, and now I fully agree it is a “must read” for everyone in the service science and service research communities.
What if our understanding of people was largely mistaken? Bregman argues that is the case: Far too many universities are teaching yesterday’s news – and it is hurting us and holding us back. Our mental model of ourselves, others, and the world allows us to act in the world. In general, better models have benefits. Science is the pursuit of better models that describe, explain and predict more. Many of the models (or logics) that people use day to day are not based upon as strong scientific a foundation as we have been led to believe. Most of the models (our mental models of the world) that people use are idiosyncratic, tacit, implicit and poorly understood. People are complex, and use many models in a wide range of situational contexts.
Bregman, who is a Dutch historian, argues that if we care about the world of people around us, and have concerns or too often struggle understanding what others are thinking, saying and doing, it is time to reexamine our understanding of humanity. I wish there was a version of the content in this book that was more accessible to those without a university degree. Unfortunately, my summary of the book below is primarily for those with scholarly inclinations. Thus, it is not very inclusive writing – for which I apologize. A responsibility of scientists is to make sure that the widest number of people possible can understand the findings, and ideally reproduce some aspects of the phenomena for themselves, locally, and inexpensively. This is a big challenge in the era of big science and in the era of AI, which requires massive computing power and huge datasets to reproduce results.
Chapter 1. A New Realism
My view on this first chapter is simply a warning: To be careful what you put in your body, both food and news. We are what we believe. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are.
“This is a book about a radical idea… That most people, deep down, are pretty decent.” (p. 1)
“Other things have the potential to be true if we believe in them. Our belief becomes what sociologists dub a self-fulfilling prophecy… Or take the placebo effect. If your doctor gives you a fake pill and says it will cure what ails you, chances are you will feel better… Take a fake pill thinking it will make you sick, and chances are it will… For obvious reasons, the nocebo effect, as it called, hasn’t been widely tested, given the touchy ethics of convincing healthy people they’re ill… If there is one lesson to be drawn from the nocebo effect, it’s that ideas are never merely ideas. We are what we believe. We find what we are looking for.” (p. 8-9)
“Imagine for a moment that a new drug comes on the market. It’s super-addictive, and in no time everyone’s hooked. Scientists investigate and soon conclude that the drug causes, I quote, ‘a misperception of risk, anxiety, lower mood levels, learned helplessness, contempt and hostility towards others, [and] desensitization’. Would we use this drug? Would our kids be allowed to try it? To all of the above: yes. Because what I’m talking about is already one of the biggest addictions of our times. A drug we use daily, that’s heavily subsidized and is distributed to our children on a massive scale. That drug is the news.” (p.12-13)
“In the digital age, the news we’re being fed is only getting more extreme.” (p. 15)
“A company with intrinsically motivated employees has no need of managers; a democracy with engaged citizens has no need of career politicians.” (p. 19)
Chapter 2. The Real Lord of the Flies
The fictional story of boys stranded on an island for over a year, and turning into savage beasts, is compared against a true story of boys stranded on an island, and largely collaborating and surviving well until rescued.
“Golding’s book Lord of the Flies would ultimately sell tens of millions of copies, be translated into more than thirty languages, and be hailed as one of the classics of the twentieth century. In hindsight, the secret of the book’s success is clear. Golding has a masterful ability to portray the darkest depths of mankind. ” (p. 23)
“In the 6 October 1966 edition of Australian newspaper The Age a headline jumped out… The boys had been rescued by an Australian sea captain after being marooned on an island of ‘Ata for more than a year. According to the article, the captain had even got a television station to film a re-enactment of the boys’ adventure.” (p. 26-27)
“This is the real-life Lord of the Flies. Turns out, it’s a heart-warming story… It’s also a story that nobody knows. While the boys of ‘Ata have been consigned to obscurity, William Golding’s book is still widely read.” (p. 36)
Part I: The State of Nature
Every child has said something like, “Just leave me alone!” Retreating to be alone, away from others, who have intentionally or unintentionally caused us harm or distress. And yet clearly together, we can do much greater things than one of us could ever do alone, even working for ages. Nevertheless, this makes me wonder about adults in a society, and our concept of justice. Specifically, this makes me wonder if there can ever truly be justice in the world if it is not possible for an individual to be allowed to withdraw from society if they so choose. Historically, if you wanted a different world, you could strike out with a like minded group of people, and then build your own world (e.g., the Pilgrims). Bregman introduces us to the philosophers Hobbes and Rousseau, and then he frames an even larger debate.
“Are we humans… more inclined to be good or evil? It’s a questions philosophers have grappled with for hundreds of years. Consider the Englishman Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)… Or take the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78)… The two never met… Nevertheless, they continue to be pitted against each other in the philosophical boxing ring. In one corner, Hobbes: the pessimist who would have us believe in the wickedness of human nature. The man who asserted that civil society alone could save us from our baser nature. In the other corner, Rousseau: the man who declared that in our heart of hearts we’re all good. Far from being our salvation, Rousseau believed ‘civilization’ is what ruins us.” (p. 43)
Chapter 3. The Rise of Homo puppy
Bregman does a good job of helping us understand humans are a relatively recent species in comparison to the age of the planet and many other species that have been around a lot longer than we have. He also does an excellent job of comparing human intelligence to that of other animals, including the great apes. The most interesting finding in this chapter to me was the correlation between friendliness and social learning. This was one of my favorite chapters in the book – so if you get a chance to only read one chapter, this is the one that I recommend most in the book. This chapter also reminded me of how much I enjoyed reading Harari’s “Sapiens.”
“Two years after Richard Dawkins published his bestseller about egoistic genes, concluding that people are ‘born selfish,’ here was an unknown Russian geneticist claiming the opposite. Dmitri Belyaev’s theory was that people are domesticated apes. That for tens of thousands of years, the nicest humans had the most kids. That the evolution of our species, in short, was predicated on ‘survival of the friendliest’… What dogs are to wolves, we are to Neanderthals. And just as mature dogs look like wolf puppies, humans evolved to look like baby monkeys. Meet Homo puppy.” (p. 64-65)
“Human beings, it turns out, are ultrasocial learning machines. We’re born to learn, to bond, and to play. Maybe it’s not so strange, then, that blushing is the only human expression that’s uniquely human. Blushing, after all, is quintessentially social – it’s people showing they care what others think, which fosters trust and enables cooperation.” (p. 69)
“The best way to conceptualise this is to imagine a planet inhabited by two tribes: the Geniuses and the Copycats… let’s assume that teaching someone to fish is tricky and succeeds only half the time. The question is: which group profits from the invention most? The answer, calculates anthropologist Joseph Henrich, is that only one in five Geniuses will ever learn to fish… By contrast… the Copycats… 99.9 per cent will end up able to fish…” (p. 70)
“Is it any wonder, then, that loneliness can quite literally make us sick? That lack of human contact is comparable to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day? That having a pet lowers our risk of depression? Human beings crave togetherness and interaction.” (p. 72)
Chapter 4. Colonel Marshall and the Soldiers Who Wouldn’t Shoot
This was an interesting chapter for me, since it highlighted how many people in the military never fire a weapon at another person that they can actually see. Often military personnel will go out of their way to fire over and around their adversaries in a conflict.
“People are social animals, but we have a fatal flaw: we feel more affinity for those who are most like us.” (p. 74)
“Raymond Dart became one of the first scientists to characterize human beings as innately bloodthirsty cannibals, and his ‘killer ape theory’ made headlines around the world.” (p. 76)
“…as Colonel Samuel Marshall continued to interview groups of servicemen, in the Pacific and later in the European theatre, he found that only 15 to 25 per cent of them had actually fired their weapons. … And many of the men who didn’t fire had been crack shots in training.” (p. 80)
“In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker calculates the average homicide among eight primitive societies, arriving at an alarming 14 per cent. … The anthropologist Douglas Fry was sceptical, however. Reviewing the original sources, he discovered that all forty-six cases of what Pinker categorized as Ache ‘war mortality’ actually concerned a tribe member listed as ‘shot by Paraguayan’… It was the same with the Hiwi. All the men, women, and children enumerated by Pinker as war deaths were murdered in 1968 by local cattle ranchers. There go the iron-clad homicide rates. Far from habitually slaughtering one another, these nomadic foragers were the victims of ‘civilised’ farmers wielding advanced weaponry.” (p. 88-89)
Chapter 5. The Curse of Civilization
Being in one place with an accumulation of property (e.g., civilization, cities), solved some problems and created others. This is the pattern of technological and regulatory ‘progress’ – mitigating one set of problems and exacerbating a new set of problems. Humanity is still learning.
“And, as we saw in Chapter 3, having more friends ultimately makes you smarter.” (p. 97)
“There’s no reason to be fatalistic about civil society. We can choose to organize our cities and states in new ways that benefit everyone. The curse of civilization can be lifted. Will we manage to do so? Can we survive and thrive in the long term? Nobody knows. There’s no denying the progress of the last decades, but at the same time we’re faced with an ecological crisis on an existential scale…. How sustainable is our civilised lifestyle? …civilization. Is it a good idea? Too soon to say.” (p. 112)
Chapter 6. The Mystery of Easter Island
This chapter, like most of the chapters in this book, has multiple ‘plot twists’ and is a cautionary tale of not believing everything you read – even from ‘experts’. Reminded me of Mark Twain’s statement: “Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.” Scientific understanding is not a straight line. As new evidence and new perspectives on old evidence appears, there is a back and forth about what really went on in history. Is it a story of human cruelty or a story of human kindness or some mixture of both? Bregman is a master of making us confront both sides of the coin. He is also unashamedly positive, since he believes that being positive in the long-term creates the world we want to live in, where human kindness is the dominant narrative, not human cruelty. Looking at the evidence on both sides is important, in trying to overcome our biases. We see the world as we are, not as it is. Even if you think Bregman is naive, he is probably right. Many have told me that Doug Engelbart was naive, but see Professor Boersema final words below… these words reminded me of what Engelbart constantly said – it was Engelbart’s lifetime pursuit to get us to wake up to the possibility that solutions can grow exponentially, not just problems.
“Admittedly, our knowledge about prehistory will never be watertight. We’ll never solve all the riddles surrounding our ancestor’s lives. … That’s why I want to take one final look at what people do when left to their own devices… What does society look like when it develops in isolation?” (p. 114)
“On Easter Sunday 1722, one of Roggeveen’s vessels raised the flag… Paasch Eyland, as the Dutch crew christened it (‘Easter Island’), spanned just over a hundred square miles – a speck in the vast Pacific… there were people on this island… Even more perplexing were the towering stone figures dotting the island – moai, the islanders called them – consisting of gigantic heads atop even bigger torsos, some thirty feet high.” (p. 115-116)
“Ultimately, it was world-famous geographer Jared Diamond who immortalized the tragic history of Easter Island. In his 2005 bestseller Collapse, Diamond summed up the salient facts: Easter Island was populated by Polynesians early on, around the year 900. Analysis of the number of excavated dwellings indicates that the population once reached 15,000. The moai steadily increased in size, thus also increasing the demand for manpower, food, and timber. The statues were transported horizontally on tree trunks, calling for a large laborforce, lots of trees, and powerful leader to oversee operations. Eventually there were no more trees left, causing the soil to erode, agriculture to stagnate and famine among the inhabitants. Around 1680 a civil war broke out. When Roggeveen arrived in 1722, only a few thousand inhabitants remained. Innumerable moai had been knocked down and the islanders were eating one another.” (p. 120-121)
“For a long time I believed the mystery of Easter Island had been solved by William Mulloy, Jared Diamond and their many cohorts. Because if so many leading experts draw identical, dismal conclusions, what’s left to dispute? Then I came across the work of Jan Boersema.” (p. 121-122).
“So what’s left of the original story? Of that tale of self-centered islanders who ran their civilization into the ground? Not much. There was no war, no famine, no eating of other people. Deforestation didn’t make the land inhospitable, but more productive. There was no mass slaughter in or around 1680; the real decline didn’t begin until centuries later, around 1860. And foreign visitors to the island didn’t discover a dying civilization – they [slave traders from Paraguay] pushed it off the cliff… …My fear is that their cynicism can become a self-fulfilling prophecy… ‘There’s a failure to recognize that not only problems but solutions can grow exponentially,’ Professor Boersema told me. ‘There’s no guarantee they will. But they can.’” (p. 133-134)
Part 2: After Auschwitz
This was the hardest part of the book to read for me. However, I am glad that I read and then even re-read parts of it to ensure that I was looking at the evidence for and against different narrative versions. Also, it was important to look carefully at the motives of the experts in telling their versions of the narratives. Moving from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty is the hard work of education, as Mark Twain commented.
“What fascinated me is that all of these studies took place during a relatively short span of time. These were the wild west years of social psychology, when young hotshot researchers could soar to scientific stardom on the wings of shocking experiments.” (p. 138)
Chapter 7. In the Basement of Stanford University
I recall that when I first read about this – I thought it was faked. It was.
“It’s 15 August 1971. Shortly before ten in the morning on the West Coast, Palo Alto police arrive in force to pull nine young men out of their beds…. What the bystanders don’t realise is that this is part of an experiment… That same afternoon, the alleged criminals – in reality, innocent college students – descend the steps of Building 420 to the basement of the university’s psychology department. A sign welcomes them to THE STANFORD COUNTY JAIL. At the bottom of the stairs waits another group of nine students, all dressed in uniforms, their eyes masked by mirrored sunglasses. Like the students in handcuffs, they’re here to earn some extra cash. But these students won’t be playing prisoners. They been the assigned the role of guard.” (p. 140)
“The study’s lead investigator, psychologist Philip Zimbardo, also got swept up in the drama. He played a prison superintendent determined to run a tight ship at any cost. Not until six days into the experiment did he finally call an end to the nightmare, after a horrified postgrad – his girlfriend – asked him what the hell he was doing. By then, five of the prisoners were exhibiting signs of ‘extreme emotional depression, crying, rage and acute anxiety’.” (p. 142)
“’It took quite a while before I accepted the idea that if could all be fake,’ Le Texier told me in the autumn of 2018, a year before his scathing analysis appeared in the world’s leading academic psychology journal, American Psychologist. ‘At first, I didn’t way to believe it. I thought: no, this is a reputable professor at Stanford University. I must be wrong.’ But the evidence spoke for itself.” (p. 150)
Chapter 8. Stanley Milgram and the Shock Machine
As always, the author makes no apologies for the mission he is on. Both Rutger Bregman and Gina Perry specialize in re-examining psychology experiments that do not tell the whole story. Recently, the foundations of behavioral psychology have been rocked, by much digging, and seeming lack of reproducibility in the social sciences. People are complex – that is clearly the first lesson to be learned. Scientists have agendas – a second lesson. Reproducibility in the age of AI is also a big issue. Science experiments that can be reproduced by average people inexpensively and locally – that is what may be needed to restore trust. Another reason I got a lot out of reading this book – it is not easy to understand and then painfully come to terms with these issues. That said, the bias of the author of this book is not concealed. Therefore, one is left with more contradicting perspectives at the end of the day. People are complex, not so simple. Miserable uncertainty replaces cocky ignorance.
“I’m going to be honest. Originally, I wanted to bring Milgram’s experiment crashing down. When you’re writing a book that champions the good in people, there are several big challengers on your list. William Golding and his dark imagination. Richard Dawkins and his selfish genes. Jared Diamond and his demoralizing tale of Easter Island. And, of course, Philip Zimbardo, the world’s best known living psychologist. But topping my list was Stanley Milgram. I know of no other study as cynical, as depressing and at the same time as famous as his experiments at the shock machine. By the time I’d completed a few months’ research, I reckoned I’d gathered enough ammunition to settle with his legacy. For starters, there was his personal archives, recently opened to the public. It turns out that they contain quite a bit of dirty laundry.” (p. 163-164).
“’The slavish obedience to authority,’ writes Gina Perry, ‘comes to sound much more like bullying and coercion when you listen to the recordings.’ The key question is whether the experimental subjects believed they were administering real shocks at all… Were people seriously expected to believe that someone was being tortured and killed under the watchful eye of scientists from a prestigious institution like Yale?” (p. 165-166)
“Publicly, Milgram described his discoveries as revealing ‘profound and disturbing truths of human nature.’ Privately, he had his doubts. ‘Whether all of this ballyhoo points to significant science or merely effective theater is an open question,’ he wrote in his personal journal in June 1962. ‘I am inclined to accept the latter interpretation.’”
“In other words, the Holocaust wasn’t the work of humans suddenly turned robots, just as Milgram’s volunteers didn’t press switches without stopping to think. The perpetrators believed they were on the right side of history. Auschwitz was the culmination of a long and complex historical process in which the voltage was upped step by step and evil was more convincingly passed off as good. The Nazi propaganda mill – with its writers and poets, it philosophers and politicians – had had years to do its work, blunting and poisoning the minds of the German people. Homo puppy was deceived and indoctrinated, brainwashed and manipulated. Only then could the inconceivable happen.” (p. 172)
Chapter 9. The Death of Catherine Susan Genovese
This was a hard chapter to read. I almost put down the book and walked away. Horrific stories are painful to read. I remember hearing the news from this chapter. I was an eight-year-old, growing up on a farm in rural Maine, when I heard this news story. Honestly, it made me very scared of cities. It took me a long time to get over that fear of cities. However, now, reading the chapter as a sixty-five-year-old, and I am exceptionally glad that I did read and r-read it. Lots of important lessons about people and how complex our institutions are (authorities, news, police, journalists, scientists, researchers, etc.) in this chapter.
“It is 13 March 1964, a quarter past three in the morning, Catherine Susan Genovese… pulls up outside the Austin Street subway station… Kitty, as everyone knows her, is a whirlwind of energy. Twenty-eight years old… Kitty loves New York City… ‘Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!’ It’s 3:19 a.m. The screams pierce the night, loud enough to wake the neighborhood. In several apartments, lights flick on. Windows are raised and voices murmur in the night. One calls out, ‘Let that girl alone.’ But Kitty’s attacker returns. For the second time, he stabs her with his knife. Stumbling around the corner, she cries out, ‘I’m dying. I’m dying.’ Nobody comes outside… The six words – ‘I didn’t want to get involved’ – reverberated around the globe… …Kitty’s death was one of 636 murders committed in New York City that year.” (p. 180-181)
“For years I assumed the bystander effect was just an inevitable part of life in a metropolis. But then something happened in the very city where I work – something that forced me to reassess my assumptions…. I arranged to meet Danish psychologist Marie Lindegaard… She pushes her laptop towards me…. I read the working title: ‘Almost Everything You Think You Known About the Bystander Effect is Wrong… …’in 90 per cent of cases, people help each other out.’” (p. 185-189)
“It’s shocking how little of the original story holds up. On that fateful night, it wasn’t ordinary New Yorkers, but the authorities who failed. Kitty didn’t die all alone, but in the arms of a friend… There was one final bizarre twist… That’s right, Kitty’s murderer was apprehended thanks to the intervention of two bystanders. Not a single paper reported it. That is the real story of Kitty Genovese. It’s a story that ought to be required reading not only for first-year psychology students, but also for aspiring journalists. That’s because it teaches us three things. One, how out of whack our view of human nature often is. Two, how deftly journalists push the buttons to sell sensational stories. And, last but not least, how it’s precisely in emergencies that we can count on one another.” (p. 193-194)
Part 3: Why Good People Turn Bad
In this part of the book, Bregman offers suggestions on how we should think about people doing bad things. Again, painful thoughts. Yes, there are big horrific things. However, as individuals, we probably all have painful memories of not being our best selves in a situation that is pretty mundane.
“This brings us back to the fundamental question: why do people do evil things? How come Homo puppy, that friendly biped, is the only species that’s built jails and gas chambers? … why has evil grown so skilled at fooling us over the course of history? How did it manage to get us to the point that we would declare war on one another?” (p. 198)
“In the next three chapters, this is my quest. I’ll introduce you to a young American who was determined to understand why the Germans fought so tirelessly right up to the very end of the Second World War (Chapter 10). We’ll dive into psychological research on the cynicism that comes with power (Chapter 11). And then we’ll take on the ultimate question: what kind of society can you get when people acknowledge the mismatch and choose to adopt a new, realistic view of humanity?” (p. 199)
Chapter 10. How Empathy Blinds
This chapter had a lot of new information and insights about the Nazi mind leading up to the Second World War. It also presents several studies on infants and children related to in-group and out-group conditioning and behaviors. Empathy and xenophobia are two sides of the same coin.
“Morris Janowitz was twenty-two at the outbreak of the Second World War. A year later, a draft notice from the US Army arrived on his doormat. Finally. Morris was on fire to enlist… The young man had long been fascinated by the social sciences. And now, having just graduated from college at the top of his class, he could put his expertise to work for a cause. Morris wasn’t being sent into combat with a helmet and a rifle, but wielding pen and paper. He was stationed at the Psychological Warfare Division in London. At the agency’s headquarters near Covent Garden, Morris joined dozens of top scientists, many of who would later go on to illustrious careers in sociology and psychology. … Morris and his colleagues were grappling with the toughest task of all. They had to unravel the mystery of the Nazi mind.” (p. 202)
“For weeks Morris interviewed one German captive after another. He kept hearing the same response. No, it wasn’t the draw of Nazi ideology. No, they didn’t have any illusions they they could still somehow win. No, they hadn’t been brainwashed. The real reason why the German army was capable of putting forth an almost superhuman fight was much simpler. Kameradschaft. Friendship. All those hundreds of bakers and butchers, teachers and tailors; all those German men who resisted the Allied advance tooth and nail had taken up arms for one another. When it came down to it, they weren’t fighting for a Thousand-Year Reich or for Blut und Boden – ‘blood and soil’ – but because they didn’t want to let down their mates.” (p. 204)
“It seems we’re born with a button for tribalism in our brains. All that’s needed is for something to switch it on.” (p. 214)
“Paul Bloom… empathy isn’t a beneficent sun illuminating the world. It’s a spotlight.” (p. 215)
“The sad truth is that empathy and xenophobia go hand in hand. They’re two sides of the same coin.” (p. 217)
“The American military also managed to boost its ‘firing ratio’, increasing the number of soldiers who shoot to 55 per cent in the Korean War and 95 per cent in Vietnam. But this comes at a price. If you brainwash… soldiers in training, it should come as no surprise when they return with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)… …. Finally, there’s one group which can easily keep the enemy at a distance: the leaders…. “ (p. 220)
Chapter 11. How Power Corrupts
This chapter speaks to the old truth that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Term limits is all I could think about.
“The big advantage of Niccolo Machiavelli’s philosophy is that it’s doable. If you want power, he wrote, you have to grab it. You must be shameless, unfettered by principles or morals. The ends justify the means… Professor Dacher Keltner is the leading expert on applied Machiavellianism… One: almost everyone believed Machiavelli was right. Two: almost nobody had done the science that could back it up… Much as in the prehistoric times, these mini-societies don’t put up with arrogance… The individuals who rise to positions of power, Keltner found, are the friendliest and most empathetic. Its survival of the friendliest. You may be thinking: this professor guy should swing by the office and meet my boss – that’ll cure him of his little theory about nice leaders. But hold on, there’s more to the story. Keltner also studied the effects of power once people have it. This time he arrived at an altogether different conclusion… The medical term is ‘acquired sociopathy.’ … They discovered that a sense of power disrupts what is known as mirroring, a mental process which plays a key role in empathy… Here we see a nocebo in action: treat people as if they are stupid and they’ll start to feel stupid, leading rulers to reason that the masses are too dim to think for themselves and hence they – with their vision and insights – should take charge.” (p. 224-228)
“Time and again we hope for better leaders, but all too often those hopes are dashed. The reason, says Professor Keltner, is that power causes people to lose the kindness and modesty that got them elected, or they never possessed those sterling qualities in the first place. In a hierarchically organized society, the Machiavellis are one step ahead. They have the ultimate secret weapon to defeat their competition. They are shameless… Shame is more effective than rules and regulations or censure and coercion, because people who feel shame regulate themselves.” (p. 238)
Chapter 12. What the Enlightenment Got Wrong
People are complex. The Enlightenment suggested that we humans have a unique talent for reason and could therefore use reason as a tool to harness our selfishness to serve all. The author clearly sees this a “nocebo” – something negative we believe about ourselves and our society, that makes it true – a self-fulfilling prophecy, encouraged by Enlightenment thinkers. ‘Can we do better?’ the author helps us all ponder this question.
“The thinkers of the Enlightenment laid the foundation for the modern world, from the rule of law to democracy and from education to science… …according to these thinkers, there was a way we could productively harness our self-interest… Reason. Not empathy, or emotion, or faith. Reason…. They became convinced that humans could design intelligent institutions which factored in our innate selfishness.” (p 245)
“What if schools and businesses, cities and nations expect the best of people instead of presuming the worst? These questions are focus of the rest of the book.” (p. 250)
Part 4: A New Realism
The preamble of this part of the book mentioned Bertram Russel (“The Will to Doubt”) and Williams James (“The Will to Believe”). And how learning about the Pygmalion Effect and Golem Effect caused the author to doubt doubt itself.
“The truth, he [Russell] said, doesn’t deal in wishful thinking. For many years that was my motto, too – until I began to doubt doubt itself… …. Bob Rosenthal decides to try a little experiment at his Harvard University Lab… But then something peculiar happens. The rats that the students believe to be brighter and faster really do perform better… Rosenthal came to realise that his students handled the ‘bright’ rats – the ones of which they had higher expectations – more warmly and gently. This treatment changed the rats’ behavior and enhanced their performance… The Pygmalion Effect resembles the placebo effect…, except, instead of benefiting oneself, these are expectations that benefit others.” (p. 255-257)
“The Pygmalion and Golem Effects are woven into the fabric of our world. Every day, we make each other smarter or stupider, stronger or weaker, faster or slower. We can’t help leaking expectations, through our gazes, our body language, and our voices.” (p. 258)
“The flip side of the Pygmalion Effect is what’s known as the Golem Effect… When we have negative expectations about someone, we don’t look at them as often. We distance ourselves from them… The Golem Effect is a kind of nocebo: a nocebo that causes poor pupils to fall further behind, the homeless to lose hope and isolated teenagers to radicalize.” (p. 258)
Chapter 13. The Power of Intrinsic Motivation
This chapter examines Jos de Blok and his award-winning home healthcare organization Buurtzorg.
“I’d been eager to meet Jos de Blok for some time. Having read about the success of his home healthcare organization Buurtzorg, I had a hunch he was one of the exponents of a new realism. Of a new view of human nature… In one sweeping statement he dismissed the whole management profession: ‘Managing is bullshit. Just let people do their job.’” (p. 264)
“The capitalist relied on carrots (read: money), whereas the communists were mainly about sticks (read: punishment). For all their differences, there was one basic premise on which both sides could agree: People don’t motivate themselves.” (p. 266)
“Edward Deci was a young psychologist working on his Ph.D. at a time when the field was in a thrall to behaviorism. The theory held – like Frederick Taylor’s – that people are shiftless creatures. The only thing powerful enough to spur us to action is the promise of reward or the fear of punishment. Yet Deci had a nagging sense that this theory didn’t stack up…. University of Massachusetts… …found ‘overwhelming evidence’ that bonuses blunt the intrinsic motivation and moral compass of employees… Sadly, the lesson of Edward Deci haven’t made it into daily practice nearly enough. Too often people are still treated like robots… A major study among 230,000 people across 142 countries revealed that a mere 13 per cent actually feel ‘engaged’ at work. Thirteen per cent. When you wrap your brain around these kinds of figures, you realise how much ambition and energy are going to waste. And how much room there is to do things differently.” (p267-271)
“Which brings us back to Jos de Blok… He dreamed of an oasis in the vast bureaucratic wasteland, a place fuelled not by market forces and growth, but by small teams and trust… Buurtzog started out… It has no managers, no call centre, and no planners. There are no targets and bonuses. Overheads are negligible and so is time spend in meetings. Buurtzog doesn’t have a flashy HQ… With this simple formula, Buurtzog has been proclaimed the country’s ‘Best Employer’ five times, despite having no HR team, and won an award for ‘Best Marketing in the Care Sector’, despite having no marketing department… That’s right, Buurtzog is better for patients, nicer for employees and cheaper for taxpayers. Every month, dozens of nurses leave other jobs to sign on with Buurtzog… De Blok sums up his philosophy like this: ‘It’s easy to make things hard, but hard to make things easy… What does need to change, De Blok will tell you, is the care system… ‘Nobody trusts anybody else, so they start building in all these safeguards’…’ ….Companies like Buurtzog and FAVI… Skill and competence become the leading values, not revenue or productivity… how we shape a society so people motivate themselves. This question is neither conservative or progressive, neither capitalist of communist. It speaks to a new movement – a new realism.” (P. 271-277)
Chapter 14. Homo Ludens
This chapter explores work and play ratio, especially for children over the ages.
“For children, the dawn of civilization brought the yoke of mind-numbing farm labour, as well as the idea that children required raising, much like one might raise tomatoes… Not until the late nineteenth century did children once again have time to play. Historians call this period the ‘golden age’ of unstructured play, when child labour was banned and parents increasingly left children to themselves…. The golden days were short-lived, as from the 1980’s forward life grew progressively busier, in the workplace and the classroom. Individualism and the culture of achievement gained precedence… Kids who behave badly don’t get a slap, but a pill.” (p. 284-285)
“According to the World Health Organization, depression is now the number one global disease.” (p. 295)
“Agora has the same teaching philosophy as hunter-gatherer societies. Children learn best when left to their own devices, in a community bringing together all ages and abilities and supported by coaches and play leaders. Drummen calls it ‘Education 0.0’ – a return to Homo ludens.” (p. 295)
Chapter 15. This Is What Democracy Looks Like
This chapter explores for nations (citizens – democracy), what was previously explored for businesses (employees – work) – what if there was less management and more trust for people doing what needs to be done.
“Democracies around the globe are afflicted by at least seven plagues. Parties eroding. Citizens who no longer trust one another. Minorities being excluded. Voters losing interest. Politicians who turn out to be corrupt. The rich getting out of paying taxes. And the growing realization that our modern democracy is steeped in inequality.” (p. 298)
“Many citizens of democracy are, at best, permitted to choose their own aristocracy.” (p. 303)
“Elinor Ostrom was an ambitious political economist and researcher at a time when universities didn’t exactly welcome women. And, unlike Hardin, Ostrom had little interest in theoretical models. She wanted to see how real people behave in the real world… All told, Ostrom and her team compiled more than five thousand examples of working commons.” (p. 312)
“’History teaches us that man is essentially a cooperative being, a homo cooperans,’ points out Tine de Moor. ‘We have been building institutions that are focused on long-term cooperation for a long time now, in particular after periods of accelerated market development and privitisation.’ … De Moor therefore advocates for what she calls ‘institutional diversity’, which recognizes that while markets work best in some cases and state control is better in others, underpinning it all there has to be strong communal foundation of citizens who decide to work together… Also with the advent of the platform capitalism, which is enabling the likes of Airbnb and Facebook to skim the fat off the prosperity of the Homo cooperans. All too often, the sharing economy turns out to be more like a shearing economy – we all get fleeced… … Elinor Ostrom, who was neither an optimist nor a pessimist, but a possibilist. She believed there was another way. Not because she subscribed to some abstract theory, but because she’d seen it with her own eyes.” (p. 314-315)
“Starting in 1982, every citizen of Alaska received an annual dividend in their bank account. In a good year, it could be as much as $3,000. To this day, the Permanent Fund Dividend – PFD for short – is wholly unconditional. It’s not a privilege, but a right.” (p. 316)
Part 5: The Other Cheek
The introduction to this part reminded me that better strategies than tit-for-tat (“do unto others, what they last did to you”) in Prisoner Dilemma type games (cooperation-defection), do sometimes evolve – more win-win. What if we assume the best even of our enemies – the following chapters examine prisons, terrorists, and war through the lens of “assume the best of our enemies.”
“Modern psychologists call it non-complementary behaviour. Most of the time, as I mentioned earlier, we humans mirror each other… In earlier chapters we saw how powerful these positive and negative feedback loops can become in schools and companies and democracies.” (p. 323)
Chapter 16. Drinking Tea with Terrorists
Norway seems to have good prisons, and the US bad prisons.
“In a forest in Norway, about sixty miles south of Oslo, stands one of the strangest prisons in the world… According to this ‘principle of normality’, life inside the walls should resemble as closely as possible life on the outside… In the US, 60 per cent of inmates are back in the slammer after two years, compared with 20 per cent in Norway… A stay in a Norwegian prison, according to their calculations costs on average $60,151 per convictions – almost twice as much as in the US. However, because these ex-convicts go on to commit fewer crimes, they also save Norweigan law enforcement $71,226 a piece. An because more of them find employment, they don’t need government assistance and they pay taxes, saving the system on average another $67,086. Last but not least, the number of victims goes down, which is priceless… It’s a system that’s better, more humane and less expensive.” (p. 326-330)
Chapter 17. The Best Remedy for Hate, Injustice, and Prejudice
Interesting story of South Africa ending Apartheid – told through the lens of two very different brothers. And interesting to learn about “contact researchers.”
“Contact engenders more trust, more solidarity and more mutual kindness.” (p. 358)
“Contact researchers consequently stress that people need time to get used to one another. Contact works, but not instantly… Mark Twain figured that out as early as 1867, observing that ‘travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindness’.” (p. 362)
Chapter 18. When the Soldiers Came Out of the Trenches
Many have heard this story – Christmas Eve 1914. The author provides a more recent example from Colombia as well.
“It’s with this story that I wish to close my book. That’s because, time and again, we find ourselves back in the trenches. All too easily we forget that the other guy, a hundred yards away, is just like us. Time and again, we fire at one another from a distance – through social media or online forums, from the safety of wherever we’re holed up. We let fear, ignorance, suspicion and stereotypes be our guides, making generalisations about people we’ve never met.” (p. 367)
“To believe people are hardwired to be kind isn’t sentimental or naïve. On the contrary, it’s courageous and realistic to believe in peace and forgiveness. That’s a truth as old as time. Because, like all the best things in life, the more you give, the more you have. That’s true of trust and friendship, and it’s true of peace.” (p. 378)
Epilogue: Ten Rules to Live By
The author suggests that ‘knowing thyself’ has been both helped and hindered by evidence from psychology, biology, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, and history over the ages. His book does force a re-examination of what we think we know for sure. It is painful at times, but also worth the effort to look carefully, and ponder placebo and nocebo effects. This is an example of the map changing the landscape – seeing our world as a self-fulfilling prophesy. What we believe about others becomes the reality in which we live.
“We can completely rethink how we organize our schools and prisons, our businesses and democracies. And how we live our own lives.” (p. 381)
Here are the summary rules:
1. When in doubt, assume the best.
2. Think in win-win scenarios.
3. Ask more questions.
4. Temper your empathy, train your compassion.
5. Try to understand the other (even if you don’t get where they’re coming from).
6. Love your own as others love their own.
7. Avoid the news.
8. Don’t punch Nazis.
9. Come out of the closet (don’t be ashamed to do good)
10. Be realistic.
“But remember, what’s naïve today may be common sense tomorrow.” (p. 397)
