Third Australasian Symposium on Service Research and Innovation (ASSRI’13)
to be held at the School of Computer Science and Engineering
University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW
November 27-29, 2013

EVENT
SSS’ SERVICE INNOVATION AWARD AND NOMINATION
INVITED SESSIONS ON SERVICE INNOVATION IN PRACTICE

REGISTRATION
The registration link is now live, please click this link to register.

CALL FOR PAPERS

With the increasingly dominant role that the service sector plays in both developed and emerging economies, the conceptualisation, design, delivery, and evaluation of service systems have attracted significant research attention and policy focus. There is also a growing recognition of the critical role of service innovation in improving productivity levels and quality of life. The transition from the manufacturing and goods-based orientation to more of a service-dominant logic has gathered momentum in recent years. Information and communication technologies (ICT) play a central role in the design and delivery of service systems. Internet and World Wide Web-related developments such as web 2.0, semantic web, cloud infrastructure, and service-oriented computing and web services, social computing, and (internet-based) human computation are just a few of the technological advances that are helping to redefine the landscape of service systems.

The third Australasian Symposium on Service Research and Innovation will bring together a cross-disciplinary group of researchers and practitioners who are engaged in research and development in the area of services, broadly defined. It will feature keynote addresses and invited lectures by prominent researchers in the field. There will also be contributed paper sessions to which service and related researchers are invited to submit their recent work. A public sector and industry forum featuring some of the academic researchers and practitioners in industry and government will also be a part of the symposium.

The service science initiative (and service science, management and engineering (SSME) discipline for the study, design and implementation of service systems) has been a driver and platform for research, over the past decade, towards the goal of building a science of services. This symposium is expected to provide a forum for analyzing and assessing the progress achieved in pursuit of this goal and to explore the foundations of and emerging directions in service research.

The symposium is sponsored by the Service Science Society of Australia. This is the apex national body representing the services research community of Australia. It seeks to promote the understanding and use of service science in government, industry and academia. The Australasian Symposium on Service Research and Innovation series also serves as its annual meeting.

PAPER SUBMISSION, SYMPOSIUM PUBLICATIONS, AND BEST PAPER AWARDS

Paper submissions should be limited to a maximum of 15 pages in the Springer LNBIP format (see link), and will be reviewed by the Program Committee on the basis of overall quality, relevance to service research, originality, significance, and clarity. Please submit papers through EasyChair. The proceedings will be published by Springer under the Business Information Processing (LNBIP) series. Selected papers will be fast-tracked for publication in a services research journal of good standing (in revised and expanded form).

Two best paper awards will be presented to the authors of (1) the best research paper and (2) the best student paper. The selection of the best papers will be made by the Program Committee Chairs in consultation with the Program Committee members based on the overall quality and contribution.

TOPICS OF INTEREST (but not limited to)

• Service science
• Smart services
• Service computing and web services
• Service market-places
• Human computation
• Crowdsourcing
• Cloud computing
• Service-oriented software engineering
• Service system design
• Service marketplaces
• Service system engineering
• Service technologies
• Applications and case studies
• Value co-creation in service systems
• Service economy
• Service marketing and CRM

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Conference Chair:
Fethi Rabhi, University of New South Wales (f.rabhi[AT]unsw.edu.au)

Program Chairs:
Joseph G. Davis, University of Sydney (joseph.davis[AT]Sydney.edu.au)
Haluk Demirkan, Arizona State University (haluk.demirkan[AT]asu.edu)
Hamid R. Motahari-Nezhad, IBM Almaden Research Center, USA (hamidm[AT]se.unsw.edu.au)
Markus Stumptner, University of South Australia (mst[AT]cs.unisa.edu.au)

Publicity Chair
Hoa Dam, University of Wollongong (hoa[AT]uow.edu.au)

Webmaster
Yingzhi Gou, University of Wollongong

Program Committee (partial list):
Renu Agarwal, UTS Sydney
Don Allen, CISCO Systems, USA
Ralph Badinelli, Virginia Tech
Boualem Benatallah, UNSW
Charlie Bess, HP
Athman Bouguettaya, RMIT
Nirmit Desai, IBM Research India
Schahram Dustdar, TU Wien
Dragan Gasevic, Athabasca University
Aditya Ghose, University of Wollongong
Bill Hefley, University of Pittsburgh
Byron Keating, University of Canberra
Ryszard Kowalczyk, Swinburne University of Technology
Yassi Moghaddam
Surya Nepal, CSIRO
Matti Rossi, Aalto University School of Economics
Hye-Young Paik, University of New South Wales
Simon Poon, University of Sydney
Babis Theodoulidis, Manchester Business School
Alberta Zomaya, University of Sydney

Important Dates:
Paper submission deadline: 22 September 2013
Author Notification: 8 October 2013
Camera Ready deadline: 31 October 2013
Conference Registration deadline: 15 November 2013
Conference Dates: 27-29 November 2013

Google (from Stanford) and Facebook (from Harvard), are two famous examples of platform technologies that began life as a university-based venture or start-up.

Which university will be the source of the next big platform technology?

What role can large commercial firms, such as systems integrators, play in partnering with universities with platform technologies?

Please consider joining the NSF webinar on November 7th at 1:30 EDT, ideally along with a strong university partner that you are working with on some platform technology.

About the NSF funding opportunity
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=504708

Registering for the NSF webinar
http://www.nsf.gov/eng/iip/pfi/bic.jsp

For example, maybe you are working with a university startup (lead by faculty or students from the university) and they have created a platform technology of some type, to improve complex systems in transportation, water, agriculture, energy, cities, buildings, healthcare, or self-service in retail, hospitality, finance, or infrastructures that impact quality-of-life in regions.   Your role might be as a systems integrator for the new platform technology, or value-add channel to customers.  The university team must be interdisciplinary with platform technology experts, human-social-behavioral experts, systems engineering and business model analysis experts, etc.

For example with cities, IBM is working with many universities creating new platform technologies that fit into our Smarter Cities Intelligent Operations Center.  Many other companies are also working with universities to improve quality-of-life in cities.  See https://service-science.info/archives/2604

For example with self-service retail, both NetFlix and Amazon have worked with university partners to improve recommendation engine based on better algorithms and incentives for helpful human behaviors.  Many other companies are also working with universities on enhanced recommendations engines or predictive analytics for sectors of business and society.  See http://www.kaggle.com

Please let me know if you or a colleague is interested in knowing more about the funding program and webinar.

ISSIP FAQ

Service is defined as the application of knowledge for mutual benefits (value co-creation processes).

Service innovations scale the benefits of new knowledge globally, rapidly, and profitably.

Service innovation depend on both breakthrough technology platforms  (e.g., smart phones), and breakthrough organizational platforms (e.g., smart franchises).

Learn more here.

2014 Frontiers in Service Conference—Call for Abstracts

Conference Date & Venue:                        June 26-29, 2014, Miami, Florida, USA
Conference Co-Chairs:                   A. Parasuraman (University of Miami) and Roland Rust

(University of Maryland)

Conference Committee Members:            Charles Colby (Rockbridge Associates, Inc.), Ming-Hui

Huang (INFORMS Service Science Section & National Taiwan University), Werner Kunz (AMA SERVSIG & University of Massachusetts-Boston), Lia Patricio (University of Porto), Jim Spohrer (IBM) and Michael Tsiros (University of Miami)
The 23nd Annual Frontiers in Service Conference will be held June 26-29, 2014 in Miami, Florida, USA, hosted by the School of Business Administration at the University of Miami. The 2014 Frontiers in Service Conference, sponsored by the American Marketing Association, INFORMS, the University of Maryland’s Center for Excellence in Service, and the University of Miami’s Center for International Business Education and Research is the world’s leading annual conference on service research and management. It attracts prominent thought leaders and industry experts from around the world to share cutting-edge knowledge and best practices.

The conference will cover a wide variety of service topics, including service science, service marketing, service operations, and service management.  Service academics and practitioners are invited to submit one-page abstracts for possible presentation at the conference.  Case studies by business practitioners are encouraged, and a “Best Practitioner Presentation” will be awarded at the conference. There will also be a pre-conference doctoral consortium organized by the AMA SERVSIG.

Please submit your abstract by Nov 22, 2013 online at:

http://bus.miami.edu/frontiers2014/call-for-abstracts/submit/

Important Dates

Abstract submission deadline:                                    Friday, November 22, 2013
Author notification of accepted presentations:          Friday, January 24, 2014
Conference registration deadline for speakers:           Friday, May 9, 2014

Please check http://bus.miami.edu/frontiers2014 for further information and updates.

In prep for upcoming AASCU meeting and panel discussion:

1.  Each of your companies has made a significant investment in educational products, partnerships and services.  Would you each start with a 3 min overview of some of your current corporate activities that support higher education and our students.

IBM Global University Program has a focus on the 6 R’s of industry-university relations – (1) research (awards), (2) readiness (skills), (3) recruiting (talent), (4) revenue (solutions), (5) responsibility (volunteers), (6) regions (entrepreneurship).

We try to recruit T-shaped graduates with both depth and breadth.  For example, deep in engineering, and with breadth than includes business knowledge etc.
2.  What are your key initiatives that will impact higher education in the next 3-5 year?  And be courageous, what would you like to see universities do more of?

MOOCs and big data analytics on learning and career pathways, of course.  Increasing emphasis on university-based entrepreneurial ecosystems (U-BEEs). T-shaped graduates also make good entrepreneurs.  Era of cognitive computing dawning (e.g., what happens when Watson like systems start passing certification exams for different disciplines and professions – medicine will likely be first, including reading X-rays, etc.).

We expect a 10x increase in industry mentorships, leading to a 2x increase in industry internships for students.  A focus on real-world challenges, real-world tools, real-world data, and real-world mentors.  Some of us even envision a possible “Moore’s Law of higher education” becoming increasingly possible, as MOOCs and era of cognitive computing technologies kick-in.

3.  As major employers, what are the intellectual skill sets you seek from college graduates?  Do you see a gap or disconnect between your needs and what you see in college graduates?

Yes, typically higher-education is great at producing I-shaped graduates (with a single discipline depth) – which was terrific for the 20th century, when the pace of change was slower.  Today we need T-shaped graduates (with depth and breadth) – the breadth improves adaptive capacity, innovation capacity, and boundary spanning abilities.  In a word, breadth = empathy, a desire to interact with others and learn what they know.  More real-world, multidisciplinary team-based challenge projects as part of courses, can increase breadth of graduates, and help produce more T-shaped graduates.

4.  Could  you  offer an insight into your internal “university” that is, how do you keep your employees fresh, creative, and contributing to the mission of your company?

IBM spend over $500M per year in upskilling employees, and has numerous programs for IBMers to improve on high-demand career pathways.  Kenexa was an recent acquisition that is central to this strategy for IBM and our customers.

5.  If an AASCU institution were your neighbor, what advice would you give them hoping they are preparing your next generation employee?

Faculty need to change 10% of their lectures per year per course, to include new lecture material that links students via social networks to top local researchers and top local entrepreneurs and industry mentors.  All courses should include a component that is multidisciplinary team-based.  Also travel and experience with other cultures and real-world challenges is key.

6.  Where are the likely sources, the types of research or inquiry that could inform joint research, product development or the development of future employees?

The mission of universities has been summarized as learning (teaching), discovery (research), and engagement (citizenship – business and social entrepreneurship).   Courses that go beyond lectures, and include real-world challenges, real-world tools, real-world data, real-world mentors can improve the pathway toward joint research, via the sequence mentorships -> internships -> entrepreneurship or employment – these types of pathways integrate learning, discovery, and engagement.

7.  How does your company move projects to scale with limited resources?  How do you ensure ongoing creativity and productive work?

Leveraging technological and organizational platforms that scale the benefits of new knowledge, globally and rapidly; Open innovation, and work with customers, suppliers, competitors, and other innovation ecosystem stakeholders, via many mechanisms including professional associations, like ISSIP.org, that focus on T-shaped innovators and professional development.

8.  Any advice for this year’s freshman class?

Work with faculty to find industry mentorships, working on real-world challenges that apply the knowledge learned in courses – join Students for a Smarter Planet and ISSIP.org, or other professional associations that bring together faculty and practitioners and students as lifelong learners (e.g., INFORMS, ACM, IEEE, IIE, INCOSE, AMA, POMS, etc.).  Travel and experience other cultures.  Working on becoming more T-shaped, and beyond! Pi-shaped is even better.

Mentorships are one way to help students become more T-shaped, having real-world mentors, who guide student to work on real-world challenges, using real-world tools and data.   We hope to have more to say at the upcoming T Summit event about increasing industry mentorships of university students by 10x, and this might have a ripple effect leading to perhaps a 2x increase in internships (risk factor removed via better knowledge of top students from mentors).  We would also want to talk about a recognition system for industry-universities-and-professional-associations that help achieve the 10x and 2x numbers, and therefore more T-shaped graduates.  However, because industry mentors are busy people (and students are very busy too, along with their faculty!), we need to have good scripted templates, models, training for mentors, clear goals to evaluate mutual success, and more.   Working with ISSIP.org, Hult International Business School, IBM, and a Service Thinking course, we recently completed some pilots aimed at creating more T-shaped graduates.  We measured success on seven dimensions (students learn about industry offerings, learn about jobs, demonstrate understanding of applying course content to real-world challenges, improve their personal brand online, become more social media savvy, generate worthwhile outcomes for effort invested).   This is an example of some of the practical, hard-work we hope to stimulate with the upcoming T Summit event.  ISSIP.org is a new 21C umbrella professional association promoting T-shaped innovators from all other professional associations, and across academia, industry, governments, foundations, etc.

T Summit: The logic of future talent, work, and higher education.

In the age of cognitive systems and social networks, a type of “Moore’s Law for Education” may arise.  To understand this core “smart service system” it is necessary to first think about human talent more precisely…

1. Talent: What is the difference between I’s and T’s?

Today’s institutes of higher education are well designed to produce I’s (I-shaped professionals).  I’s have depth in one area of study, practice, and culture.  More and more employers are looking for T’s (T-shaped professionals).  T’s have depth and breadth.  So T’s have something extra that makes them highly sought after in the search for talent.  For example, Professional Science Masters (business on top of science degrees) can help with boundary spanning abilities; general education (liberal arts) can help provide some of the T’s communication skills; Service Science Management and Engineering courses can also help with breadth; all of these are especially effective when projects (challenge-based, multidisciplinary team projects with industry mentors) are well-integrated into courses across the curriculum spectrum from science and engineering, to management and public policy, to social sciences and economics, to humanities and arts, adopting an essential element of professional schools, like medicine, law, education, and architecture, that build the professional social networks of students before graduation.

Talent is a blend of basic competences, professional skills, and attitudes.  Basic competences (by definition) can be assessed with multiple-choice questions, and certificates of competence are sought after by students and practitioners in search of new employment opportunities.  On the other hand, professional skills cannot be fully assessed except by other professionals, usually during a performance or challenge, such as playing piano, operating machinery, or working well on a team project with others.  Attitudes shape our responses to situations we cannot control, and are fundamental to human performance in challenging situations, but are quite difficult to assess without participating in diverse projects and activities together.  Interaction with others, mentors and role models, is essential for the development of skills and attitudes that go beyond more-easily-tested basic competences.

2. Work: What is the T advantage (especially in the age of cognitive computing, and smarter machines)?

Breadth provides T’s more boundary spanning skills and attitudes,  which sets the stage for improved teamwork, adaptive capacity, and innovation capacity.   Smarter machines are on the way, such as IBM’s Watson system which won against the world’s best players of the TV game show” Jeopardy!,”  and in the age of cognitive computing these smarter machines will easily pass multiple choice tests of competence in more and more areas where human experts have “competence depth.”  Eventually, these systems competence depth (as assessed by multiple-choice competence tests) will be greater than the depth of the best I-shaped human experts, in part because these systems can rapidly “learn” by absorbing millions of pages of text in seconds, and in fact these systems will actually support the generation of new multiple-choice basic competence tests.  In the era of cognitive computing, which has already begun, the T advantage includes boundary spanning skills and attitudes that improve teamwork (empathy and communications), adaptive capacity (co-learning rates), and innovation capacity (creativity and non-routine problem solving).

3. Higher Education: How to foster and inspire more T’s?

Faculty and their courses are at the heart of higher education today, and we expect the same will be true in the future.  Top faculty are among the best I-shaped human experts, the 1% club of intellectual abilities in their nations for their chosen fields of specialization.  When students take courses in a specialized area their “depth competence”increases in a way that can be objectively measured by multiple choice testing.  What is different in the future is that faculty will play an increasingly active role in changing their courses year over year to benefit from new knowledge (discovery, research) and new applications (engagement, entrepreneurship).  MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) and other technologies will be used by faculty to shift standardized, routine lecture materials into student pre-requisites (self-service learning of depth competences); thus freeing up faculty time to inspire students on the frontiers of knowledge and applications, which is inherently social (current world issues, by people alive and contributing today).  The skills and attitudes needed to help students develop social networks to others, including researchers and industry practitioners, will foster greater breadth, and provide more access to role models to learn skills and attitudes.  Both faculty and students are likely to become more T-shaped, as well as the practitioners will become more T-shaped lifelong learners through these challenge-based project interactions – beyond basic competences, skills and attitudes will need to be brought to bear.   A type of “Moore’s Law for Education” may also arise if 10% of most course’s lectures are newly added every year to reflect the fore-front of research and practice, while the pre-requisite MOOC lectures become better integrated and optimized to prepare students to take the more advanced version of the course that emerges each year.   Industry and higher education will both be transformed, co-creating more T’s and fewer I’s – where T’s are better adapted than I’s for a rapidly changing world of opportunities.

This so-called  “law” we envision is quite simple to explain, and requires faculty to shift 10% of their older course lectures to MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) each year, and add 10% new lectures based on topical themes in research (top journals) and business/societal applications (top new business and social innovations related to course topics). Each year the collective of course-prerequisite MOOC lectures gets integrated and compressed by 10%.  No decrease in faculty.  No increase in number of lectures (except as new courses are added).  Increasing student access to course-prerequisite MOOCs.  Success depends on several factors, including re-integration of knowledge, and more-student self-service via MOOCs. Each year the students entering the courses are better prepared, students graduating know more, faculty stay more engaged as stewards of their course areas, and faculty and students expand their social networks connecting to top researchers and top entrepreneurs. The “law” is based on principles of service science, especially the principle of run-transform-innovate (“improve the engine while the car is running,” or systematic exploitation-exploration learning model (Prof. James March, Stanford) – applied to service system entities).

Like the original Moore’s Law this is a “self-fulfilling human law” of investment and change, not a law of nature.

The Shape of Analytics Certification explains T-shaped data scientists for big data analytics
https://www.informs.org/ORMS-Today/Public-Articles/February-Volume-39-Number-1/The-shape-of-analytics-certification

Nick Donofrio (IBM Fellow Emeritus and retired SVP Innovation) explains T-shaped innovators
http://www.kauffman.org/advancing-innovation/innovation-that-matters.aspx

IDEO CEO Tim Brown explains T-shaped design thinkers
http://chiefexecutive.net/ideo-ceo-tim-brown-t-shaped-stars-the-backbone-of-ideoae%E2%84%A2s-collaborative-culture

Prof. Henry Chesbrough (Berkeley, Open Innovation) explains T-shaped managers
http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrychesbrough/2011/04/28/the-war-for-talent-and-open-innovation/

Gary Beach blogs about Critical Thinking an Quantitative Skills
http://citizenibm.com/2013/08/gary-beach.html

Business Higher Education Forum describes T-shapes and deeper learning
http://www.bhef.com/publications/promoting-effective-dialogue-between-business-and-education-around-need-deeper-learning

Dr. Phil Gardner (MSU, Collegiate Employment Reearch Institute) provides references to T-shaped professionals
http://www.ceri.msu.edu/t-shaped-professionals/

If you would like to find out more:

The T Summit is coming…

In preparation for this event – NSF Virtual Forum…

 Platform Technologies and Smart Service Systems

Here is my presentation:
http://www.slideshare.net/spohrer/nsf-virtual-forum-20130923-v2

Here are some short answers to questions:

The role of technology in service systems

1. What are the essential research elements to make possible the integration of platform technologies into service systems?

Platform technologies are owned by providers, who have to negotiate rights and responsibilities with customers, as value propositions.

Service systems are dynamic configurations of resources (people, technology, organizations, information) connected by value propositions.

Customers will not adopt platforms where the  value propositions are not viewed as win-win.

So an essential research element is around understanding the relationships between, platform technologies, smart service systems, and value propositions.

Some call the value propositions ‘business model design.”

What is different about the design of service systems and service design?

Service design has a heavy emphasis on customer experience, and is often done by the service provider.

Design of service systems is a bigger design space, and includes modeling competitors, governing authorities (regulations), etc.

How can the deployment of smart systems be accelerated?

Perhaps the wrong question.  Think of service systems as evolving over time – getting smarter (e.g., better information for all stakeholders to make better win-win decisions, co-elevate capabilities, trust parties more, improve faster, be sustainable, be resilient, etc.).   So the real question is service system innovation mechanisms, both to make existing service systems smarter and create new types of service systems as well.   One way to accelerate would be to have a good historical analysis done – for this we need a Linneaus and Darwin of service system taxonomy and evolution, respectively.   Modularity of service systems is one item that will jump out as a way to accelerate innovation of technology platforms – think of a car as a technology platform and all the innovation of each module – engine, seats, windows, doors, seat belts, driver interfaces to information systems, etc.

2. Can you share your experience regarding the use of smart technology in service system settings?

Yes, all IBM’s Smarter Planet examples.  My favorite is the Smarter Cities Intelligent Operations Center (SC IOC) in Rio.  My second favorite is Watson in Healthcare.

3. What qualifies as a “smart”service system?  Can you provide examples?  Good starter question for Jim.

Yes, as above SC IOC is a platform technology and each city that has it can be an example of a Smart Service System (over 2500 worldwide inlcluding Rio)

How many hospitals have a Watson advisor (technology platform), only a small number.  Each hospital is an example of a Smart Service System, if they use Watson or other technology platforms to improve measures.

The measures of smartness include productivity, quality, compliance, innovativeness, sustainability, resilience, and much more.

In general, smart service systems are instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent.  Instrumented means sensors, sensors everywhere – more of the information (real-time and historical, as well as monte carlo predictive runs) that stakeholders, providers, customers, governing authorities, etc. – need to make better win-win (value co-creation, capability co-elevating) decisions is available.  Interconnected means people have easy access to information about a particular service system, as well as others that interact with it via value propositions, perhaps displayed on their smartphones.   Intelligent means recommendations systems that work to provide stakeholders useful choices – for example, Watson-style recommendation systems, or Amazon-style recommendation systems.

The technology platform is a shared part of many smart service systems – service systems made smarter by access to the technology platform of some provider.

Service systems are dynamic configurations of resources (technology, people, organizations, information) connected internally and externally by value propositions.

Because of the diversity of resources that make up service system, service science, which is the study of service systems and value co-creation processes, requires multiple disciplines working together (engineering, social sciences, management, economics and law, etc.).

About academe-industrial partnerships:

4. What are the ingredients, in your experience,that are essential for a successful partnership with industry and academia?

Industry-academia partnerships in my experience, work best when there is a clear focus on real-world challenges, real-world tools, real-world data, and real-world mentorships – where students work in teams (ideally multidisciplinary) to apply what they have learned in their courses to real-world challenges.

These experiences can help the faculty and students who have entrepreneurial inclinations do university-based startups.

These experiences can help the industry mentors identify top students for internship and employment opportunities.

Do you think that these would be any different in partnerships for service system innovation?

The focus on real-world challenges, tools, data, mentorships should work great for service system innovations.

The main thing is to make sure the team of students is multi-disciplinary, and the real-world challenge can be managed in a meaningful way with the time and course content constraints of faculty.

5. How do you go about finding the right academic and industrial partners?  How could NSF facilitate this?

IBM has relationships with 5000 universities around the world, 1/3 in the US.  We have many programs to engage on multiple topics.

I think NSF does a great job with the award programs, and experimenting with LinkedIn Groups, Virtual Summits, etc.   Challenges like mini-X-prizes are also an important area to explore, especially if done with Reginal Economic Development groups around the US.

About human innovation capacity:

6. What are your insights regarding human innovation capacity in these type of partnerships?

Human innovation capacity at universities can be estimated by looking at the startups generated by the university (one method of estimation).   Technology platforms for smarter service systems are aligned quite well with the startups coming out of universities these days.  To grow rapidly startups often create or align with existing technology platforms to accelerate scaling up globally, and maximize customers, etc.

The NAE list of engineering grand challenges are also well aligned with real-world challenges.  http://www.engineeringchallenges.org

How can the experience of students be enhanced?

The student experience should include: growing their personal brand, on-line professional persona, and membership in professional associations (they may change universities, change jobs, but advancing in professional associations last a life-time).  The professional association also builds their global network of professional contacts.

The industry mentor also becomes part of the students professional network.

The outcome of mentorships should also be posted publically to social media platforms, and build the students online portfolio.

About Service Science:

7.  What is the potential role of service science researchers in service system  innovation?  In this solicitation?

At SJSU (Prof. Lou Freund, service system engineering) and VaTech (Prof. Ralph Badinelli, business and IT service system operations) already have industry projects for their students to analyze service systems.  Other service science researchers in academic are doing the same.  With a focus on industry mentorships related to technology platforms and smart service systems, service science researchers and faculty teaching about service systems should be able to work closely together.   Service science researchers in industry can help guide as well, especially with real-world challenges about the win-win-win benefits of university-startup, large-industry-integrators, and customers for platform technologies for smart service systems.

Previously, I posted these answers to these other questions:
https://service-science.info/archives/3209

I have also made these posts about the NSF efforts:
https://service-science.info/archives/3189

Today I was at the Global 1000 Startup Showcase in Menlo Park, CA.

There was a good discussion about industry models of working with universities and startup companies from Huawei, Tyco, Dell, Microsoft, Intel, and IBM.

The win-win-win – where big company, startup company, and customers all benefit – was highlighted.

I mentioned the following IBM programs and learned a lot about the programs from other large industry players represented on the panel.

IBM Smart Camps – global events and IBM mentors

IBM Global Entrepreneur Program – access to platform and tools

IBM Partnerworld – programs for partners

IBM Supplier Connect – small and medium companies selling to global 1000

IBM Acquisitions – about one a month for the last ten years

IBM University Programs – 6 R’s (research, readiness, recruiting, revenue, responsibilities, and regions)

Two key challenges: (1) working with universities to create more T-shaped graduates with depth and breadth across disciplines, sectors, cultures, and (2) simplifying complex integration of multiple companies’ offerings.

ISSIP (International Society of Service Innovation Professionals) exists to promote T-shaped innovators professional development, across disciplines, sectors, and cultures.  ISSIP is also promoting mentorships between industry and academics – perhaps a 10x increase in mentorships could lead to a 2x increase in internships.  If you have an interest in T-shapes, mentorships, and the the transformation of universities to align with regional economic development groups, please feel free to contact me at spohrer@us.ibm.com.

In preparation for the NSF Smart Service Systems Virtual Forum, here are some questions and responses:

1.       What do we mean by smart service systems?

Smart service systems benefit customers and providers.

Service providers try to compete for customers by (1) improving existing offerings to customers, (2) innovating new types of offerings, (3) evolving their portfolio of offerings, (4) changing their relationships to suppliers and others in the ecosystem.

“Smart” refers to improvement in key performance indicators over time (e.g., productivity indicators, quality indicators, compliance indicators, sustainability indicators, resilience indicators, etc.).  “Smart” often implies increasing system capabilities over time, that overcome system constraints.  An important constraint in many service systems is the trade-off between productivity and quality…. often the way to break out of that constraint requires new technology, information systems, and customer skills for self-service… for example, a bank’s ATM (automatic teller machines) systems introduced in the 1970’s improved both productivity and quality indicators for customer to withdrawn their money day or night. However, it required customers learning new skills.  Retail store self-service check-out systems require even more skills for self-service.

“Service” refers to the application of knowledge (e.g., technology, organizational forms, business models, etc.) for mutual benefits, between a provider entity and customer entity (and often including other stakeholder entities, such as government agencies concerned with regulator compliance, investors concerned with return on investment, etc.).  Within the service science community “service” is synonymous with “value co-creation between entities” and includes many forms of cooperation, coordination, and even mutually beneficial forms of competition.

Most service phenomena derives from division of labor between entities (service for service exchange), creating mutual dependencies between entities in vast networks of interaction and exchange.   Entities apply knowledge, including technological tools, forms of organizations, to create mutual benefits that improve productivity (provider concern) and quality (customer concern) and other measures.

“Service systems” (in general) refer to dynamic configurations of resources (people, technology, information, organizations) interconnected by value propositions internally and externally to other service systems. A bus stop may have structure for passengers to wait for the bus and stay dry, often they are in disrepair – however, many cities lease access to that resource to advertising agencies – and get a new revenue stream to support public transportation, as well maintenance service.   Adding display screens for ads, makes them “smart” in some ways, and may require cameras for extra security.

“Service systems” (specifically) have been evolved and designed for all aspects of business and society – transportation, water & waste, agriculture and manufacturing (servitization, such as Rolls-Royce “Power-by-the-hour”), energy and electricity (“smart grids), ICT, building, retail & hospitality, finance & banking, healthcare, education, government.   Types of service system entities – entities with rights and responsibility to offer service to others include – people, businesses, universities, hospitals, cities, states, nations, etc.  A better taxonomy of service system entities and understanding of the distribution of types of service systems in different societies is much needed.

“Service innovations” scale the benefits of new knowledge, globally and rapidly.

2.       What are the major hurdles to introduce new knowledge and innovations (e.g., technologies, organizational forms, methods of interaction, etc.)  developed in academic institutions into commercial smart service systems?

Apple’s innovations have often been based on customer experience and ease-of-use.  Interaction design and new business model design are aspect of smart service system design.

The lack of ability for academics to interact with real customers and evolve new knowledge and innovations limits their commercialization efforts (e.g., lean startups are often better than licensing efforts for bringing difficult-to-scale new knowledge to market).  Facebook interacted with students as customers.  Google interacted with faculty and students as customers.   SPSS interacted with faculty and students as customers.  Tools that are accessible on-line provide a platform for academics to reach more customers.  Amazon, Google, Apple, IBM/Softlayer, HP, Cisco, and many others are providing academics access to Cloud based capabilities that allow new modes of customer-provider and customer-customer, etc. interactions.  The internet, the internet-of-things, and other platforms can improve academics ability to interact with customers.

a.       Resources – Kickstarter and other crowd-funding sites offer ways for customers to invest in the innovations they want to see become real
b.       Technology – Real tools and real data often limit academics abilities to take on real challenges
c.       Policy – Privacy and protection of data is a very real concern these days, especially as cyber-security is increasingly necessary to stop criminals
d.       Business Models – lean startups pivot their business models and business concepts quickly based on experiments with real customers
e.       Industry Mentorships for students in course – learning to apply knowledge to take on real-world challenges is key

University four missions:
Learning – teaching: knowledge transfer
Discovery – research: knowledge creation
Engagement – entrepreneurship: knowledge application
Wholeness – citizenship: knowledge integration

3.       Why are behavioral and cognitive considerations essential to further adapt technologies to be used in service systems?

Behavioral and cognitive scientists can help help understand both customers and other people inside service systems, how they interact, what incentives are required to change behaviors, etc.

a.       What is the role of service science in this process?

Service science is sometimes described in the literature as the short version of service science, management, engineering, design, arts, and pubic policy (SSME+DAPP) – with the clear indication that it is an emerging transdiscipline, that borrows from many existing disciplines, but does not replace any of them.

The emerging service science community links academics, industry, and government to build the body of knowledge about the nested, networked service systems in which we all live and work.  The service science community has many members who aspire to be better boundary-spanners, better T-shapes to work collaboratively on innovation teams.  ISSIP.org is an umbrella professional association working on that goal.

4.       What are the characteristics of successful industry-academe partnerships in service systems innovation?

One measure of success: how many mentorships are created to allow students to engage with industry mentors working on real-world challenges, where the application of knowledge that faculty have inspired the students to learn about is encouraged.  Because real-world challenges do not respect discipline boundaries, and require engineers, managers, social scientists, and arts and humanities working together to engage a customer with a prototype solution – these teams are more likely to create viable service system innovations.

Industry and government provides platforms, tools, data, challenges and the academy provides multidisciplinary student teams and faculty guides to create viable solutions to challenges that can be tried out in the real-world with real-customers either as startups (some based on industry provided platforms) or as compelling proof-of-concepts that build the personal brands of students and prepare them to be T-shaped adaptive innovators, ready to hit-the-ground running in industry jobs.

5.       What is your take on the new BIC solicitation?  What do you expect will come up from this?

Fabulous solicitation.  Will impact both human capital and close knowledge gaps.

Human capital:  I expect students working on new startup ideas will come out of this, leveraging some existing industry platforms and creating some new platforms.   Better prepared students and graduates – more T-shaped adaptive innovators who can be better prepared to be in both start-ups or other industry positions on leading edge service offerings.

Knowledge gaps:  Many knowledge gaps exist related to understanding service systems, and how to scale the benefits of new knowledge, globally and rapidly – new technologies, new organizational forms, new business models, new skills in people, etc.