Service Research and Innovation Institute (SRII): IEEE and ACM are excellent well-established professional associations. Many other great professional associations also exist (e.g., INFORMS, AMA, IIE, AIS, etc.). For example, a note from Prof. Ralph Badinelli, Virginia Tech and Chairperson of INFORMS Service Science Section, informs: “The Service Research Innovation Institute (http://www.thesrii.org/) is fast becoming a major force in integrating academic and industry research and development in services. SRII will hold its second annual conference, co-sponsored by the INFORMS Service Science Section, on March 30 – April 2, 2011. This conference is a unique opportunity to share the latest research and IT technologies with the most notable colleagues in the field of service science. Please see the Call for Papers (http://www.thesrii.org/index.php/global-conference) and consider submitting an abstract. Due dates for abstracts will be extended. Updates about the conference schedule will be forthcoming on the conference web site.” http://www.thesrii.org
Service in Abnormal Condiditons
Service in Abnormal Conditions. Steve Baron (UK, University of Liverpool) and Gary Warnaby are developing a fascinating sub-area in the emerging service science area that they call “service in abnormal conditions.” Steve recently presented at the Frontiers in Service Conference in Karlstad Sweden, and I quote a bit of their abstract: “As we write this abstract, the UK is in the grip of the worst winter conditions for over forty years. Extremely heavy snowfalls, coupled with temperatures as low as -18oC, have disrupted normal life. Roads have become impassable, schools have closed, and millions of people have been unable to get into work. The extreme, ‘arctic’ weather conditions have been the number one news item on every bulletin for the past three weeks. Every citizen has a weather-related critical incident to share. ‘Normal service’ has been temporarily suspended. ”
Did I mention how much planning they must do for “service in abnormal conditions”? Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm7MeZlS5fo (and to see application of same asset management technology at University of Dayton http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfzsnLJcS7I) Also see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm7MeZlS5fo
What is a holistic service system?
Defining What is a Holistic Service System: I am looking for ideas about what is a good definition for a holistic service system. My own definition is to first offer some examples: cities, universities, luxury resort hotels. And then mention that holistic service systems are a type of system of service systems (service network), that must address: transportation, water/air, food/products, energy, communications, buildings, retail, finance, health, education, security-governance. And then to give an out of this world example – a space ship. And finally, a more mundane example, a luxury ocean liner… So what is a good definition for a holistic service system? My primary interest these days is apply service science to the study of universities and cities — two tightly coupled “holistic service systems” — nations and states are also good examples of holistic service systems. Populations of holistic service systems balance interdependence and independence. An interesting finding so far is the near linear correlations between % of GDP of nations and % of universities in the top 500….. A good source of data is http://www.arwu.org/ARWUAnalysis2009.jsp For exanmple, China makes a nice country to look at over the last few years, since they have jumped both in GDP and top-500-universities. So far the leader though is still the US, with 23% of WW GDP and 30% of top-500-universities…. So universities and cities as tightly-coupled holistic service systems are of keen interest these days… a city-making industry is beginning to emerge, and universities seem to be a core aspect of new cities. In IBM University Programs (IBM UP) WW, we are very interested in helping to align universities on the idea of an emerging “city-making” industry. The key is not just a city-making industry, but making it economical to re-cycle and re-make cities as a sustainable investment decade over decade… even the most environmentally friendly buildings today, may look like dinosaurs in 20 years as green-tech gets onto its own Moore’s law of continuous improvement. Think of super-computers 20 years ago compared to super-computers today. Green buildings are approaching their own kind of decade-based accelerated improvement curves due to new materials and techniques.
IAMOT
Academic Discipline Growth and Management of Technology (MOT): Prof. Yasser Hosni (US University of Central Florida) is the President of the International Association for Management Of Technology (IAMOT). He recently invited me to serve as a member of IAMOT’s Management of Technology Accreditation Board (MOTAB). Prof. Tarek Khalil (Egypt Nile University and US University of Miami) was one of the founders of this academic discipline and author of one of the first MOT textbooks that is revised and still in use today. Ben Amaba (US IBM) introduced me to Prof. Khalil and this area several years ago, and helped point out connections to both systems engineering as well as service science, management, engineering, and design. We all agree technological change is a great enabler of business model and social-organizational change as well. After all it was the technologies of agriculture that allowed cities to work as an organizational structure, and it was rail and telegraph technologies that enabled modern businesses that depend on economies of scale to become viable. In other words, technological innovation can enable service innovation, as service systems and service networks are transformed, and new win-win mechanisms arise (that entities can engage in) to co-create value.
Short takes – week of 6 July
Shorts:
Handbook of Service Science: http://www.springerlink.com/content/n820995328410k61/
Grand Challenge in Service (Cambridge UK 21-26 Sept 2010) http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/service/events/serviceweek/
Andy Neely (UK Cranfield/Cambridge) AIM Research http://aimresearch.org/
Future Skills https://service-science.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/2010_02-IBM-SSME-final.pdf
Citizens Collaboration & Co-Creation in Public Service Delivery (COCKPIT) (EU) http://www.cockpit-project.eu/
Ann-Charlotte Plogner (Sweden) provided a heads up on the Executive Management Group for Service
Tourism Service – Paris 3D on iPhone – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n0052nWets&feature=related
Information service (US) Data.Gov http://www.data.gov/
List of least developed countries (UN) http://www.un.org/special-rep/ohrlls/lldc/list.htm
Engineering Cities (UK) http://www.ceg.ncl.ac.uk/info/pdf/engineeringcites.pdf
The Entrepreneurial Narrative – Inspiring Other Innovators http://www.businessinnovationfactory.com/bif-6
Building Architecture and Urban Design http://www.som.com/content.cfm/www_home
Great Raleigh NC (USA) http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/06/06/517077/planner-envisions-a-greater-raleigh.html
NSF Urban Long-Term Research Areas (USA) http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09551/nsf09551.htm
And the winners are …. http://2010.thecableshow.com/mediareleases/release/winners-of-cioit-competition-2010
Georgia Tech (US) Innovation Competition http://rnoc.gatech.edu/index.php
Transylvania University of Brasov (Romania) Green Campus GENIUS http://ziuaenergiei.ro/pdf/Unitbv.pdf
IBM Global Entrepreneurship and Smart Camp https://www.ibm.com/isv/startup/welcome.html
(jazzy intro version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2qzNayQ5Fw)
IBM Watson (DEEP-QA) – http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20Computer-t.html?hp
IBM Smarter Cities http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bus/html/smarter-cities.html?cntxt=a1000055
Smarter Planet http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/index.html?re=sph
IBM Academic Initiative https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/university/academicinitiative/
IBM Global University Programs https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/university/
Services Science, Management and Engineering (SSME) http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/spaces/ssme
How to make your city smarter: Creating and assessing the path to prosperity
http://www.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bus/html/smarter-cities.html?cntxt=a1000055
Understanding Luxury Hotels as Holistic Service Systems
Understanding Luxury Hotels as Holistic Service Systems: Kim Grange, VP Facilities, Venetian Resort Hotel Casino has an interesting job, and thinks about the Venetian as a city within a city. Holistic service systems are a type of system of systems or service network, that includes transportation, water/air, food, energy, communications, buildings, retail, finance, health, education, governance-security, etc — all interconnected and interdependent. Listen to the following video clip several times — there are some deep insights into holistic service systems here… Venetian, Las Vegas, NV USA: “A City Within A City”
1. Transportation: 100,000 visitors on a daily basis
2. Water: 46 million gallons per month
3. Food: Multiple restaurants
4. Energy: 35Megawatts/hrs electricity and 7 backup generators (equivalent of 25,000 homes or 200,000 population city)
5. Communications: 3 data centers for IT operations
6. Buildings: 3 buildings and 7000 rooms
7. Retail: 500,000 sq ft of retail
8. Finance: Casino is the heart, source of revenue that must stay running
9. Health: not mentioned in video, but must have on-site medical staff
10. Education: 2 M sq ft of convention space
11. Security… you bet, from security cameras in casinos, etc.
Governance Service Systems and Understanding California Counties
Governance Service Systems and Understanding California Counties: I am continuing my education on the topic of California Counties, by studying the material at http://www.counties.org/default.asp?id=110. Local universities are very important to counties (most county employees graduate from local universities, and counties are often very high up on the list of largest employers in cities within counties). Counties are an especially interesting type of “formal service system entity” — a type of virtual person that can sue and be sued and own property, and with a built in mechanism for viability – the right to levy and collect taxes …. County Powers: The California Constitution authorizes a county to make and enforce local ordinances that do not conflict with general laws. A county also has the power to sue and be sued, purchase and hold land, manage or dispose of its properties, and levy and collect taxes authorized by law. Thanks to Mark Dixon (US-CA IBM) for this pointer and others.
In search of the most innovative MBA student team in the world:
In search of the most innovative MBA student team in the world: More and more student competitions are a way to align university, industry, and government on important themes. Singularity University is producing a lot of interesting project plans with the goal of creating projects that could change the world (http://singularityu.org/programs/graduate-studies-program/gsp-09/team-projects/) Winners of competitions may even go on to become entrepreneurs, and there are a number of programs that cities are starting to bring successful global entrepreneurs to their door, by providing them recognition for their achievements. For example, New York City and Fordham University have established a venture fellows program (http://www.nycventurefellows.org/). Anu Basu, who is a professor of Entrepreneurship at San Jose State University (SJSU) in San Jose, CA USA, gave me some interesting pointers to local entrepreneurs, who have helped inspire some of her students to think about becoming entrepreneurs themselves: (1) Blippy. with founder and CEO Ashvin Kumar, for social media sharing what you buy on your credit cards, and (2) Art.sy, with founder Carter Cleveland, with a focus on sharing/buying/promoting art online. Tom Kalil, Deputy Director of Policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote a nice blog piece on the broader topic of grand challenge competitions and public-private partnerships some time ago, when he joined the Obama Administration (http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Prices-as-Incentives-for-Public-Private-Partnerships/). More recently, Asher Spittler, who is the Director of Corporate Sponsorship for the Innovation Challenge at Idea Crossing, sent me information about the Innovation Challenge, which is the world’s largest MBA competition, producing 50+ concept plans from top MBA students and representing 10,000+ hours of MBA labor (they have had over 1,140 MBA contestants). More information at: http://www.ideacrossing.com/ (for those who like a video clip – I recommend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLZt99Txmnk).
update 1 July – Australia, Greece, Smart and more
Service Science in Australia: Andrew Dingjan (Australia CSIRO), who is the CSIRO Services Science Network Leader and General Manager, Business & Commercialisation, recently ran CSIRO’s first Services Science Network conference … I was able to join via telepresence, and the event website should be available soon. Hossein Zadeh (Australia RMIT) and Jay Hannon (Australia IBM) were present at the meeting. Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) delivers solutions for agribusiness, energy and transport, and much more…. http://www.csiro.au/
Service Science in Greece: Christos Nikolaou (Computer Science Dept, University of Crete, Greece) helps lead the Transformation Services Lab, http://www.tsl.gr They are doing work in a number of interesting areas including web service, value nets, internet of services, etc. … Happening now is the Second Service and Software Architectures, Infrastructures and Engineering (SSAIE) Summer School http://www.ssaie.eu/
Also, Marianna Sigala helps lead the Service Management in Tourism at University of the Aegean, Greece, and is the Director of Information and Publications, International Council on Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Education www.chrie.org … many times the top universities in a city help generate a lot of tourism, so tourism, universities, and cities are linked.
Fraud Detection in Service Systems: Prof. Hui Xiong (US Rutgers) and I met a ICEE 2010 in Guangzhou China several weeks ago. His research into analytic methods of detecting financial fraud may very well have applications in the domain of rooting out government corruption. Smarter cities should have lower levels of corruption and fraud, how can analytics help?
Grand Challenges of Engineering: Angus McColl (US USC) is the Executive Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering. He points out that the National Academy of Sciences Grand Challenges map well onto IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative. They cover the quest for innovations that will impact many systems we depend on every day including: transportation, water/environment, food, energy/greentech, information and communication technologies (ICT), buildings, commerce, finance, healthcare, education, and cities (as system of systems with infrastructure for service provisioning).
How does HPC help universities? My intuition is that we are on the verge of needing High Performance Computing (HPC) to model cities, etc, and to do better policy planning for regional and other holistic service system entities. So I am trying to understand how High Performance Computing (HPC) helps move universities up in the rankings of global universities. Is it the access to HPC that allows them to win more government grants and fund more research, and thus attract key faculty? Is it that the HPC makes their faculty, students, and researchers more productive, and allows them to make discoveries and publish more high quality work? Looking for pointers on this topic. Here are a few basic resources to study to find universities with large HPC installations. Many times the university is linked to a government lab that has the HPC. More and more universities are making their supercomputers available to industry, as well, and it has been speculated that super-computing might be a factor in helping the US economy recover http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9121718/Can_supercomputers_help_save_the_economy_.
Top 500 Supercomputer Sites http://www.top500.org/list/2010/06/100
Top Green500 List http://www.green500.org/
Of course, one could also ask what are potential negative consequences of university rankings in the first place:
the family as a service system
The family as a key type of service system: In my AMA SERVSIG keynote one of the questions was about families as a fundamental type of service system – my talk looked at cities, universities, and businesses as more recent (in the last 10,000 years of human history) types of service systems. Evert Gummesson, University of Stockholm Business School, gave me some pointers to the Relationships Foundation that has some public policy analysis of family-friendly government (http://www.relationshipsfoundation.org). I recalled some interesting things I found about families, as I was thinking about them as service systems (1) “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State”. Article 16(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, (2) “Developing a Family Mission Statement” Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, and (3) “In the agricultural age, work-life-and-family blended seamlessly.” IBM GIO 1.0. Also, Chuck Darrah is a professor of anthropology at SJSU, and done some interesting studies of family and work life in Silicon Valley (http://wfnetwork.bc.edu/leaders_entry.php?id=134).