Commentary—Toward a Research Agenda for Human-Centered Service System Innovation

Paul P. Maglio (), Stephen K. Kwan () and Jim Spohrer ()
Additional contact information
Paul P. Maglio: School of Engineering, University of California, Merced, Merced, California 95343
Stephen K. Kwan: Lucas Graduate School of Business, San José State University, San Jose, California 95192
Jim Spohrer: IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, California 95120

Service Science, 2015, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Solving service problems has enormous practical consequences for the economy and society because (a) more than 80% of jobs in the United States are in the service sector, with most science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates working in the service sector; (b) many complex service problems resist traditional optimization solutions; (c) private investments in platform technologies that underlie business and societal service innovations (smart service systems) are on the rise; and (d) the United States lags in public investment in service research behind countries such as Japan, China, Finland, and Germany. The search for service innovation requires new theories and new methods to address problems unique to services, and what little students are being taught about the service sector has not kept up with the rapid growth of STEM jobs in service or with modern entrepreneurial opportunities. We think that effective understanding of complex human-centered service systems requires a new approach that combines multiple methods, perhaps drawing from industrial engineering and operations research, social and behavioral sciences, information systems, and computer science and computational modeling. In this commentary, we outline a series of broad considerations and concerns, fundamental and applied questions, and specific research agenda items for service system innovation.

Keywords: service modeling; service theory and principles; service transformation and innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/serv.2015.0091 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orserv:v:7:y:2015:i:1:p:1-10

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Service Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().