Conference Summary

Overview

From October 5 through 7, 2006, two-hundred fifty four people, representing 21 countries and many areas of government, industry, and academia, gathered at the IBM Palisades Conference Center in New York to discuss Service Science, Management, and Engineering (SSME). Sponsored by IBM Research, IBM University Relations, IBM Government Programs, the conference aimed to demonstrate results in the formation of multi-disciplinary SSME, (including ways SSME has been introduced into curricula, and services research that is underway or is planned) and also to outline a roadmap for establishing SSME as its own discipline (including how practitioners can join with faculty and administrators to focus efforts on cross-functional, service-oriented courses and research, and recommended actions for academia and governments).

A welcome reception was held the evening of October 5 with an opening talk by Gina Poole, IBM Vice President, Innovation and IBM University Relations . On the morning of October 6, the meeting was kicked off by Robert Morris , IBM Vice President, Services Research, who set the context and expectations for the two days. The keynote address by Nick Donofrio , IBM Executive Vice President, Innovation and Technology, focused on the need for a national post-secondary educational strategy and activities to create it. There were talks from multiple university representatives and a government panel session that addressed new funding initiatives. Carl Schramm , President and CEO, Kauffman Foundation, gave an address on the changing economy and new roles of individuals, government, industry, and education. Val Rahmani, IBM General Manager, Infrastructure Management Services, shared her views on the practical application of service science. Irving Wladawsky-Berger , IBM Vice President, Technical Strategy and Innovation, provided a wrap-up for the day, focusing on the relation between service systems and complex engineering systems . The day ended with a poster reception that further highlighted service education and research at more than 30 additional universities world-wide.

The second day’s opening talk was given by Debra Stewart , President, Council of Graduate Schools , on the mobilization of training and research around compelling areas that will drive the economy of the future. The day included additional talks from university representatives. A business partner panel that discussed the need for experiential learning, acquisition of skill, and the need for implementation and application of services thinking in the marketplace completed the sessions. The conference closed with a summary given by Stuart Feldman , IBM Vice President, Computer Science Research, who articulated the need for pi-shaped people -- not just t-shaped people -- that is, those with depth in multiple areas along with breadth in even more areas.

In addition to presenters, the audience included leadership outside academia and IBM, including representation from foundation agencies, government agencies, agencies for advanced studies and industries (see the list of invited institutions).

Insights and Outcomes

There seemed to be much excitement at the meeting, perhaps generated because for the first time, the study and understanding of service had come together as unique, distinguishable topic. Of course, not everyone agreed on how to approach the topic, but a common language is starting to develop, drawing government, industry, and education together and generating new questions, intellectual excitement, and ultimately economic value. A community is coming together with at least five clusters of intellectual impetus.

• operations research / mathematics / optimization,
• industrial engineering / systems engineering,
• computer science / information technology / information management,
• process formalization / physics / complexity, and
• business / organizational sciences / social sciences.

As Stu Feldman stated, "anything really exciting will happen with a crossing at the clusters." Many university faculty demonstrated substantive results in the formation of multidisciplinary Service Science, Management and Engineering initiatives. They presented ways SSME has been introduced into curricula to date and learned about services research underway or planned at other institutions. Several outlined suggested steps for establishing SSME as a legitimate discipline within the academic community. A few identified how practitioners can join with faculty and administrators to focus efforts on cross-functional, service-oriented courses and research. Others identified recommended actions for academia and governments.

At a Tipping Point

Presentations ranged from detailed descriptions of service program development and implementation to granting and funding to economic impact and imperatives. Some key factors driving the need for service science and education that we identified include:

• Innovation is a culture, not a department
• Test of leadership for the academy, government, and industry
• Need for service innovation because services are not seen as being innovative; foreseen imperatives include:
• Integration of technological and social research domains
• Education and training of college graduates
• How is service innovation captured, as intellectual property or through other avenues?
• Need for government and institutional advocacy and support as catalyst
• The global economy is at a tipping point
• Technological advances that fuel the tipping point include network ubiquity and a new state of openness, from sharing of personal information to sharing of technological and transactional specifications.
• Business design advances through horizontally-integrated operations that allow for dynamic transformation with limited disruption to the organization. A new view of revenue expansion and customer equity as key corporate metrics.
• Continued need for domain experts and new demand for people who have focused knowledge in one or two domains and spectral knowledge about related domains. Demand for people skilled at fusing their technical competency with industry-specific knowledge and business-process expertise.
• Evolution of new institutional forms. A restructuring of the economic landscape through the creation and propagation of entrepreneurial capitalism. Effects have been struggles in corporate restructuring and new institutional forms such as venture capitalism, foundations and research institutions.
• The state of services curriculum and research
• Surge of services programs at the masters level
• Sample of program development and evolution.
• Need for an integrated research program.
• Generate a more coherent and standard definition and language around services
• Sample of research that is underway; tendency for productivity and efficiency focused work.
• Need for trained and hirable people
• Urgent need for graduate education in service.
• Service has not been viewed as a business function but instead as a personal matter or skill. Service has not been documented, so innovation is difficult.

Themes

• Aspects of service
Social interaction and relationship management are at the core of service. We need increased attention to the role and contribution of social sciences to fuel service innovation. The commonly understood definition of SSME is too narrowly focused. There is need for public funding of social science research. For example, there is substantial NSF funding of basic sciences like physics, biology and engineering, but far less not in psychology, sociology, design, and business.

There is recognition that traditional management and engineering frameworks have problems defining service and service management. Most systems in services are still too rigid; need to identify and examine the exceptions or variability in service systems to determine if they should become the rule and feedback into the system design. Optimizing the system in one way will not work.

We need to use different levels of examination in our research. For example: the microscopic level and operation level. A microscopic level examination could be to determine how service networks are the same / different from other networks. How are they formed and how can we predict their formation? And, is this connected to the innovation process? Can the innovation spaces then be characterized? An operation level examination could be to determine the options to cost cutting in business models to understand how to generate revenue and profit from a service.

• Multidisciplinarity
The interdisciplinary nature of service science is essential, but not necessarily a random activity. How will accountability and credibility across disciplines be created and sustained? There is a need for new expertise that can bridge among science, engineering, social science, management, and ethics.
• Challenges for higher education
Changing the structure of higher education: silos and tenure process. The common path for recognition is to gain tenure within a single discipline. Now, where do we publish, how can we reach an appropriate audience? There may be interdisciplinary research and publication problems or issues with the research being accepted and published considering most publications focus on depth not breadth today. The old reward and incentive, funding, and resource structures need to evolve or be replaced by new frameworks that support interdisciplinary activities.

Migration of courses across all degree levels. The primary focus for SSME initiatives have been at the graduate level with most progress being made in master’s level programs. How should service education be included across degree levels, particularly into undergraduate learning?

Teaching through experience and teaching around real problems. Some faculty have small companies so there is practical experience and cases for use of methods. However, this is not the case at all universities. There needs to be an experimental component to learning to be able to process the content from the curricula allowing people to have experiences that solidify their abilities to network, distilling insights, and extrapolate to identify value. The notions of creating spaces to think and implementation of the journeyman model of learning were recommended.

• Acceleration factors for higher education
Already there are established centers of study and development of new programs. The redefinition of the American university has begun. Industry is working with universities to meet their unmet needs. Service research and application are beginning to progress in parallel.

Significant Progress in a Short Time

• Designing a discipline and designing a curriculum
  • Design of a discipline is the creation of a principled model of a coherent body of research and practice.
  • Design of a curriculum is the creation of a program of study leading to a degree or certificate.
  Key issues need to be addressed in the design process. Identify the key issues (for a discipline) and key topics (for a curriculum) that need to be addressed and start from there. Determine the goal and then determine what needs to be included to support the program.

  It cannot be taken for granted that you can start with what you already have. Focus on being right to market, not necessarily first to market. Employ a back-to-the-basics research paradigm to create simple useful models of the complex realities of service. Note that the creation of simple will probably require deep analysis to yield scientifically-based principles.

• Creating competency models
• Cross-industry for a foundation in domains such as business processes, information engineering, information architecture and technologies.
• Industry-specific for a foundation in project work, case study, and knowledge of industry-specific models.
• Development of new kinds of interactional expertise that combines science, engineering, social science, management and ethics towards evolution and agreement on a language that reflect core concepts.
• Leading to a commons of services

  There needs to be consideration for the long cycle of research, the short cycle of practice, and the intersection at dissemination. We should consider reinventing part of our past to examine the applicability of current models to what we think is a new problem. For example, review history of wholesaling to understand how it spread around the world and its evolution and impact on current thinking. Or, the study of cluster evolution to determine the stickiness of service and service innovation through socio-geographical examination on a global scale.

Your turn

Many attendees took away action plans. In order to properly represent the outcomes of this event, we need to hear from you. You said you would

• Move forward with curriculum development, program planning and implementation.
• Write grant proposals
• Collaborate with others on material development
• Start special SSME interest group
• Meet with others to discuss new electives for undergrads and grads
• Form a group of companies, academics and national economic development agencies to establish an SSME development centre
• and more...

summary of attendee feedback received