Service system innovations cannot change just one thing (systems thinking/design thinking).

Changing technology changes people’s skills and interaction patterns.

Changing people’s skills often impacts rules, rights, and responsibilities.

Changing rules, rights, and responsibilities often impacts customer and provider expectations and experiences.

One of the most fundamental laws of Economics and Service Science is Ricardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

To me, Richardo’s is non-intuitive, surprising, and helps explain why there are so many service system entities in the world…

Benefits abound when entities

do a little bit more of what they are good at,

and a little less of what they are bad at,

and then use exchange to make up “the difference” in personal needs and wants…

Combine Richardo’s Law with learning curve benefits and technology automation benefits for routine actions,

and you get a ratchet-ing up of capabilities of entities that follow this simple rule…

so both co-creation of value and co-elevation of capabilities for entities that interact according to the simple rule

This is a fundamental observation of service science about the nested, networked service ecology and how it evolves over time…

Linking these concepts is also important:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_curve

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-creation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocatalysis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_organisation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropic_force

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_of_hierarchical_complexity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambidextrous_organization

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecology

“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.”
Alfred North Whitehead, English mathematician

I was recently asked the following questions:

– What is ISSIP?

– What is a service platform?

– What is service science?

– What is a T-shaped professional?

– How is this related to your work at IBM with universities?

– What are the important future trends you see?

Here are my initial answers:

– What is ISSIP?

ISSIP = the International Society of Service Innovation Professionals

ISSIP is pronounced I-ZIP

ISSIP was founded by industry and academic collaborators to promote service innovations for an interconnected world.

Ammar Rayes, a Cisco DE, is the founding President of ISSIP.

Charlie Bess, an HP Fellow, is the founding Vice President of ISSIP.

Jeff Welser, Director IBM Almaden Service Research, is the VP elect for ISSIP.

I am one of the founding Board members, as well as chair of the ISSIP SIG Education and Research.

ISSIP SIG Education and Research aims to increase the quantity and quality of service science related courses and degree programs.

ISSIP SIG Education and Research aims to increase the number of T-shaped service innovators in business and society.

– What is a service platform?

A service platform has the reach to places and entities to scale the benefits of new knowledge globally and rapidly.

IBM’s Watson natural language and question answering capability will become available for smart phone app developers as a service platform.

Watson specializes in ranking queries that related semantic classes and instances, so for  the classes “Explorers” and “Dates”  – the instance “Columbus” is highly correlated with “1492” and less so with “1506” and “1451”.

IBM Smarter Cities Intelligent Operations Center is a service platform for scaling business solutions that improve the performance of urban regions.

IBM itself can be viewed as a service platform for scaling businesses and solutions with some 120 acquisitions in the last ten years alone.

Pharmaceutical companies be viewed as service platforms for scaling the benefits of new molecules.

Franchises are service platforms for scaling the benefits of new knowledge globally and rapidly.

Cities with high use airports can become negative-service platforms when they scale human viruses negative consequences globally and rapidly.

– What is service science?

ISSIP embraces the service-dominant-logic definition of service.

Service is defined, not as the tertiary economic sector, but more generally as the application of knowledge for mutual benefits.

Service innovations scale the benefits of new knowledge, globally and rapidly (and for businesses profitably).

Service innovations includes technology platforms (e.g., smart phones), organizational platforms (e.g., franchises) and others platforms for scaling.

Service science is the rigorous study of service systems and value co-creation phenomena, both collaborative and competitive mechanisms.

Value co-creation is a kind of win-win outcome – for example, when customers build their own furniture they can get higher quality components, but lower costs.

Performance measures of service systems include quality, productivity, compliance, and innovativeness.

Types of service systems entities include people, businesses, universities, cities, states, and nations.

Performance measures of a service ecology include resilience, sustainability, competitive parity, and quality-of-life (learning rates & knowledge burden).

– What is a T-shaped professional?

T-shaped professionals have both depth and breadth.

An I-shaped professional may be an expert, but lacks skills for interacting with other disciplines, sectors, and/or regions/cultures.

Pi-shapes and M-shapes have depth in two or three areas, but most employees today are I-shapes.

An organization or nation with more T-shapes is more likely to have higher performance teamwork as well as more boundary spanning innovations.

The T-shaped metaphor has been used for at least a couple decades, but ISSIP is working on making the concept more rigorous.

– How is this related to your work at IBM with universities?

At IBM I helped start IBM’s Venture Capital Group, Service Research area in IBM Research, and now run IBM’s University Programs worldwide.

IBM University Programs is concerned with the 6 R’s – research, readiness (skills), recruiting, revenue (universities are like small cities), responsibility, and regions.

Part of IBM Smarter Planet strategy is to help universities increase the quantity and quality of start-ups (Smart Camps).

IBM also wants to help start-ups scale up globally and rapidly.

Universities are the most important drivers of innovation in a knowledge economy, and more and more startups come from universities.

Many businesses instead of hiring a student with a new degree, would rather hire that same student after they have entrepreneurial experience, even if the start-up failed.

Most start-ups fail, but they create T-shaped people – which is what businesses want to improve performance of teams and boundary spanning innovations.

IBM acquires about one company a month for last ten years (see the IBM M&A wikipedia page)

By one estimate, 2/3 of these acquisitions started in a university-based entrepreneurial ecosystem.

SSME (Service Science Management and Engineering), Smarter Planet, Big Data Analytics, Data Science, Smarter Cities, and Urban Science – are all related.

IBM University Programs uses the 6 R’s to advance IBM’s Smarter Planet strategy, and increase the number of T-shaped innovators.

– What are the important future trends you see?

We have identified a number of important technological trends:  self-driving cares, cities that recycle their water, manufacturing as a local recycling service using robots and 3D printers, artificial leaf to solve energy shortages long term, Watson and Cognitive computing for smarter machines and systems, rapid building construction and recycling, social business for retail and hospitality, crowd-funding and gamification in finance, robotic surgery and 3D printed organs in medicine, challenge-based entrepreneurial learning, smart governance that balances improve strongest-line and improve weakest link policies.

Some of the answers are also embedded in the following presentations:

http://www.slideshare.net/spohrer/service-innovation-20130611-v1

http://www.slideshare.net/spohrer/ibm-smarter-planet-strategy-20130524-v5

Recently I was asked the following questions:

-How does IBM define service and SSME?

-Some consider SSME as applied research.  What are the basic research needs of SSME?

-Service sector counts for about 70% of U.S. GDP. Do you think we have sufficient R&D investment in this area either by Federal government or industry?

-Is there a particular need to develop next-generation workforce to be ready for a more service-oriented economy? If so, what are the particular skill-sets needed?

-Service science calls for highly cross-disciplinary and system-level research. What are the particular scientific challenges that require engineering research?

-What is IBM’s approach to integrate social behavior science into the service engineering research?

Here are my initial answers:

-How does IBM define service and SSME?

“Service” is defined in many ways by different people

Economist define “service” as the tertiary economic sector, which does not produce tangible output like agriculture and manufacturing

Computer scientists define “service” as a technological capability accessible via API (application programmer interfaces).

IBM business units define “service” as offerings from our Global Technology, Business, Process Service organizations that help customers solve a problem.

Service-dominant-logic and service scientists define “service” as the application of knowledge for mutual benefits (value co-creation phenomena)

IBM Research defines “SSME” as an emerging academic disciplines to make service innovation more systematic by understanding service systems rigorously

Most IBMers prefer the term “smarter systems” to “service systems” and “Smarter Planet curriculum” to “SSME”

Smarter Planet and smarter systems make it easier to communicate with customers.

Because smarter systems/service systems generate a lot of data, Big Data/Analytics/Data Science can be viewed as one aspect of Smarter Planet/SSME

Because smarter systems/service systems include cities, Urban Science can be viewed as one aspect of Smarter Planet/SSME

-Some consider SSME as applied research.  What are the basic research needs of SSME? 

SSME = Service Science Management and Engineering, service science for short

The applied research aspect of service science is the study of service systems (e.g., businesses & offerings, etc.) and service innovation methods

The theoretical research aspects of service science deal with the evolution of an ecology of service system entities and value co-creation phenomena

The basic research needs of service science go beyond performance measurements of individual service system entities or even types of entities.

The basic research needs of service science are rooted in mathematics of the evolution of species of service systems and value co-creation mechanisms.

The basic research questions dealing with accelerating learning curves of capabilities in a service ecology of nested, networked service system entities.

Types of service systems entities include individual people, families, businesses, universities, cities, states, nations, etc.

-Service sector counts for about 70% of U.S. GDP. Do you think we have sufficient R&D investment in this area either by Federal government or industry?

Economists measure 70%, but manufacturing and agricultural firms care about service innovation as well.

I think there is insufficient R&D investment in service research.

Here is what our current CEO thought was significant when we kicked off SSME efforts at IBM:
http://www.ibm.com/ibm/governmentalprograms/pdf/Issue_Paper_Services_Science_v.1.0.pdf

-Is there a particular need to develop next-generation workforce to be ready for a more service-oriented economy? If so, what are the particular skill-sets needed?

This is the focus of ISSIP.org – the International Society of Service Innovation Professionals

ISSIP (pronounced I-ZIP) promotes T-shaped service innovators, with depth and breadth, across disciplines, sectors, and regions/cultures.

We will have a T Summit at IBM Almaden Research Center on March 24-25, 2014 to explore this in more depth.

The skill sets include both traditional areas of depth, as well as breadth – boundary spanning, adaptive capacity, interactional experience, etc.

The skill sets associated with breadth come from working on many team projects solve real world challenges.

-Service science calls for highly cross-disciplinary and system-level research. What are the particular scientific challenges that require engineering research? 

All the of Smarter Planet and NAE Grand Challenge Engineering Challenges are relevant
http://www.smarterplanetchallenge.com
http://www.ieee.org/education_careers/education/university_programs/curriculum_resources/smarterplanetchallenge.html

However, the long-term challenges are for sustainability, resilience, competitive parity, innovativeness of nested, networked service system entities.

These issues are partially addressed in this paper.
http://servsci.journal.informs.org/content/4/2/147.abstract

-What is IBM’s approach to integrate social behavior science into the service engineering research? 

Historically, we have hired T-shaped social scientists, engineers, business students and worked to make them even more T-shaped!

More T-shaped means both increasing their depth and breadth.

Again, this is the professional development goal of ISSIP.org

Many “data scientists” and “urban scientists” will come from social science, engineering, management, arts & humanities backgrounds

-Jim

Dr. James C. Spohrer
Director, IBM University Programs World-Wide (IBM UP)
Innovation Champion (http://www.service-science.info/archives/2233)
IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA 95120 USA
spohrer@us.ibm.com
408-927-1928 (o)
408-829-3112 (c)

ReConCon is about re-imagining governance (or systems of rules).

The Founding Fathers of the United States did it, and people have been fighting and dying to preserve and evolve those rules for over two hundred years.

ReConstitutional Convention (ReConCon) is a Digital Age exploration of many of the same broader political themes.

Jake Dunagan of IFTF (Institute For The Future) is one of the driving forces behind ReConCon.

He recently mentioned that:

Several ReConCon participants will be part of Peter Leyden’s Reinventors’ Roundtable on Reinventing Governance. Join us on May 30!: http://reinventors.net/roundtables/reinvent-governance/

I agree with the organizers that rule innovation (governance) is as important as technological innovation for future designs.  Rule innovation is sometimes termed meta-rules or governance.  Perhaps rule innovation is even a form of technology innovation, in the broadest sense of technology as knowledge people use.

Paul Romer makes this point about the need for meta-rules and rule innovation in this Ted Talk about the need for Charter Cities.
http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html

The mathematics of why systems need rules, and not just technology (extra capacity) may be of interest too..
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs–Thomson_paradox
“It follows that increasing road capacity can actually make overall congestion on the road worse.”

Of course, just intuitively we know advanced material technology can cause advanced problems if we do not have advanced rules (intangible technologies?  improvements in moral understanding and moral character of entities in a system).  Of course, in complex systems with authority and privileged entities, distortions do occur, and sometimes breaking rules is a means to get to a more productive value co-creation state for the majority of entities.

If you want a hard problem to work on consider this:

(1) It is easy to imagine rapidly rebuilding technology innovations from some starting point, and even to imagine a useful end state (e.g., circular technological economy, spiraling upward in capabilities, in which minimum energy, minimum material, minimal build-recycle time are in place for all technologies and their transformations one to another).

(2) It is hard to imagine the same for rule innovations – what is the starting point (a minimum population growing to a larger population of entities?), what are the boundary conditions (one species in the population? multiple intelligent species with rights and  responsibilities?), what is moral understanding and improvement that parallels technological improvement paths?

No simple answers on this – so I would say it is a hard problem to work on — not sure ReConCon is there yet…. but I hope they get there soon.  Our future(s) may depend on it.

Service science is the study of value co-creation phenomena and the co-elevation of nested, networked service systems.

Cities and communities are of course service systems.

Here are some items, regarding improve-weakest-link and communities-mutual-learning, that may be of interest…

Check this out, curators of open data about communities…
http://www.datacatalogs.org
http://www.datacatalogs.org/about

Important role universities can play – if they have the data – Purdue TAP
Purdue Technical Assistance Program (TAP)
http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2013/Q2/purdue-projects-help-cities-increase-efficiency,-cut-costs.html

Since 1986 TAP programs and services have assisted more than 12,000 organizations, trained more than 26,000 employees, created or retained $872 million in sales, increased capital investments by $217 million, contributed to cost savings of $107 million, and created or retained more than 11,000 jobs in Indiana. In addition to the 10 projects for the cities, students in the senior design class did another 21 projects, including seven for health care providers, three for Purdue Memorial Union and residence halls, and 11 for companies and manufacturers.

And let’s not be snobs – there have to be programs for people who do not go to college…
Switzerland National Service Apprenticeship Programs
My recent blog posting…
The Power of Apprenticeship Systems
https://service-science.info/archives/2850

I hope ISSIP.org T-shaped innovators can play a role in shifting the competitive framework of the planet…

We need a balance of improve strongest and improve weakest, much like the NFL Draft accomplishes.

Many companies see sustainable, resilient, competitive cities as important to the future.

https://service-science.info/archives/2604
People learning from people
Universities learning from universities
Cities learning from cities
Value co-creation and co-elevation
Businesses competing for collaborators, to scale up benefits of new knowledge on their platforms
Winners? Everyone as global innovation games improve cities’ competitive parity

Smarter Planet Challenge
http://www.smarterplanetchallenge.com

Student Projects

National Academies’ Grand Challenge Summits

The Service Solution Design group atIBM’s Almaden Research Center has an immediate opening for an experienced and outstanding computer scientist with deep subject matter expertise in statistics, machine learning, data mining, business process management and text analysis areas of Computer Science and Operations Research.

Experienced candidates with a Ph.D degree in Computer Science and a strong interest in discovery of business and societal insights from the Big Data of complex service systems are invited to apply.

Based in Silicon Valley California, the Service Research group at IBM’s Almaden Research Center conducts research leading to the development of improved solution offerings for customers as well as analytical tools to study, manage, engineer, and design complex service systems.

Research challenges we investigate include: What are the characteristics of an effective service solution? How to measure the quality of a service solution being proposed? How and what can be learned from prior service engagements to improve the quality of future service solutions? What are the root causes for inefficiencies in a service solution lifecycle management? How to identify similar service solutions? Which service solution sets are candidates for ‘service products’? Etc.

We apply, advance, and publish research in the areas of statistical analysis, text analysis, business process management, case management, social business process management to address the above stated research questions.

We strive to stay at the cutting edge of framing problems and defining solutions in the emerging area of Service Science.

Our team members have won best paper awards from prestigious conferences and journals such as INFORMS and Decision Sciences Journal in the past. We are looking to add an outstanding researcher to the team to investigate the above exciting problems.

Computer Science PhD required, Masters degree or courses in SSME a plus.

Interested candidates may send their resumes to Rama Akkiraju at: akkiraju@us.ibm.com

Recently, I have been trying to learn more about the German/Swiss Apprenticeships Systems.

There is much to learn.

After receiving a pointer from Ralph Eichler, President of ETH Zurich (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNo4CXakpJ8), I fortunately now have a guide Dr.Ursula Renold, Head of Division Comparative Education Systems, ETH Zurich, KOF Swiss Economic Institute.

Here is what I have learned from Ursula so far:

“..to your questions:
1. Adopting the Swiss (or even also the German) dual-track VET approach in other countries is very difficult, complex and time-consuming. That’s why ETHZ decided to create my research division. We are convinced that other countries need to go in this direction in order to avoid “lost generations” (this is actually the big topic in Europe).
http://www.kof.ethz.ch/en/about-us/kof-divisions/education-systems/
http://www.kof.ethz.ch/en/about-us/people/ursula-renold/

A first pilot project where we realized a dual-track pathway similar to what we have in Switzerland was done in India (Pune and Bangalore) in the field of manufacturing industry (2006-2010). There we have a proof of concept. I’m currently writing together with other people involved a book about this initiative. With several other countries we are in discussion (Sweden, Morocco, China, Russia, US (via pathway to prosperity project run by Harvard Graduate school of Education and Jobs for the Future JFF –> see contact below).

2. With African countries we didn’t have any project until know. With Morocco we just start a discussion.

3. Efforts in the US: I was for 6 month at Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). They are running the “pathways to properity” project –>
http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/features/2011/Pathways_to_Prosperity_Feb2011.pdf

9 US states are involved: Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, New York and California. If you need further information please contact Nancy Hoffman, at Jobs For the Future (http://www.jff.org/staff-member/nancy-hoffman/87).  Nancy wrote a very good book that explained why US states should adapt the Swiss apprenticeship model –> Nancy Hoffman, Schooling in the workplace, how six of the world’s best Vocational Education Systems prepare Young people for jobs and Life (Harvard Education Press), Cambridge, 2011

In line with this project we just started a research project (online survey) in 5 US states (NY, TN, IL, MA, MO) in order to identifying the potential of the business sector as new educational actor (the involvement of companies/business sector is a pre-condition for an adaption of a Swiss or German apprenticeship model).

Some papers concerning Swiss VET system
In addition to the above-mentioned answers I send you some information about our Vocational Education and Training (VET) system and some pointers to literature that may be of interest for you.

– Entering the Labor market (Start ins Berufsleben)
– Facts & Figures 2012
– OECD Learning for Jobs, Switzerland
– Professional Education (tertiary level)
– Why Some Firms Train Apprentices and Many Others Do Not; about cost-benefit-study of apprenticeship in Switzerland

Hope this provides the starting point you are looking for in your studies.”

It really has provided a great starting point, many thanks!  🙂

Some hints for university faculty collaborating with IBM.

1. For general information about IBM University Programs

Please review…

Overview Presentation:
What’s UP at IBM? University Programs!
http://www.slideshare.net/spohrer/ibm-up-external-20130514-v11

Contact:
Jim Spohrer (spohrer@us.ibm.com)
Director IBM University Programs
http://www.service-science.info/archives/2233

2. To connect with an IBMers who shares your interests…

Some interest areas…
– Learning/Teaching/Courses
– Discovery/Research/Publications
– Engagement/Entrepreneurship/Service

Making contact…
– Ask your best IBM contact for help reaching out…
– Search web for “IBM, <topic of interest>” to find names of IBMers
– Search social media for “IBM, <topic of interest>” to find names of IBMers

Request an exploratory discussion….
– Exchange emails
– Link via social media – Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
– Schedule an intro call
– Schedule a meeting at a conference
– Schedule a university or IBM location visit

3.  Be specific about the outcome desired, and then find an IBMer who can help…
– To establish a new course or degree program
– To establish or expand a research center
– To be a guest lecturer or course instructor
– To place students in internships or full-time positions
– To mentor, judge, or be an advisory board member
– To play a role in a conference, special publication, or professional association
– To jointly pursue funding for a project of mutual interest
– To find out more about specific IBM programs
– To point you to appropriate online self-enablement kit

4. The key is to find local IBMers, and expand your list of IBM contacts:

– IBM Research Campus Relationship (research)
– University Relations contact (research)
– Academic Initiatives contact (readiness)
– Technical Advocate Program contact (readiness)
– Recruiting Manager (recruiting)
– Client Executive (revenue)
– Community & Corporate Affairs contact (responsibility)
– On Demand Community local IBM volunteers (responsibility)
– Senior Location Executive Program contact (region)
– On Campus IBMer (6 R’s)
– Partnership Executive Program contact (6 R’s)
– other locally employed IBMers (initial contact)

5. Be aware that the best relationships usually…

– Require clearly defined outcome(s) of mutual interest
– Depend on the strong support of local IBMer(s) as champion(s)/volunteer(s)
– Align strongly with regional economic development goals
– Align strongly with IBM initiatives, such as Smarter Planet, Analytics, Cloud, etc.
– Involve the use of IBM HW, SW, Solution & Service offerings
– Often tap into deep IBM expertise in area(s) of mutual interest
– Often generate positive communications, press, and visibility in social media
– Often can help scale an innovation globally and rapidly
– Often connect with broader collaborations through professional associations
– Require persistence in building the relationship over time
– Do not depend on an IBM awards, which are highly competitive (but might lead to awards)
– Do not depend on an IBM conference sponsorships, which are quite rare
– Do not depend on IBM funding, but on the active engagement of IBMers