"CMU's eSCM (eSourcing Capability Model) focuses on the full contract life cycle view, governance, relationship, and value propositions for both provider and customer/client perspectives."
- Alan K Yamamoto, IBM USA

"This document covers all areas, subjects, interests, concerns, problems of service science today. My interests are service business models in manufacturing industry, and improved sector collaborations."
- Tadao Sumi, Shoin University, Japan

"We are very pleased with the initiative... to emphasize the need for a profound knowledge base for service science… At our Institute we are developing a large scale program with industry and academic concerning service science. We fully agree with the authors that service science is an important science for the future that yet has to be further developed. Our contribution focuses on three critical success factors of building a successful scientific body of knowledge on service innovation: demand driven knowledge development, the value of a design orientation, and organization growth models. We think these issues can strengthen the ideas already posed. A Service Innovation Capability Model (SICM) could be one of the instruments developed from an interdisciplinary knowledge base to support organizations on this road."
- René van Buuren, Timber Haaker, Wil Janssen, Edward Faber, Telematica Institute, The Netherlands

"This document is a move in the right direction. However, after reading the document, it's still hard to see what we can retain as the key points. Revenue, profit, and market share and productivity are better KPIs, in contrast to other variables mostly considered as CSFs (Critical Success Factors)." `
- Diem Ho, IBM University Relations, EMEA

"Service-product is a false dichotomy; the real dichotomy is functional-holistic."
- Tor W. Andreassen, Norwegian School of Management

"Need more specific research proposals – too abstract and high level. For example, pricing service is a challenge - many want it for free. Research recommendation: service should make life easier – what are key drivers to do this? Business recommendation: what is business value - how to measure and control? Policy recommendation: policy influence understanding – what is being planned?"
- Wolfgang Braun, META Mergers & Acquisitions

"Four concepts (adaptive innovator, SSME, service systems, and value proposition) need to be tied in better to address the sustainability of service innovation. Add service concept design in order to involve broader disciplines (e.g., art and design) into SSME."
- Soe-Tsyr Yuan, National Chengchi University, Taiwan

"I enjoyed reading the paper, particularly the policy implications on education and its usage in business. Needs more region specific data and roadmaps."
- Mark Goh, National University of Singapore

"The discussion is well written but remains too generic. For example, the definition of service systems is excellent but it includes all organized, purposeful activity; same with service systems being complex systems; absolutely right and how do we take it from there? There is a lot of work on complex systems.

I would go for a different approach and focus on some key evolving phenomena making service systems different e.g. productization and servitization; service versus product dominant logic in value creating systems; co-producing and co-creating; the revival of socio-technical systems as differentiators in service systems. This approach is more manageable and makes more sense than being all inclusive which I am afraid leads nowhere."
- Uzi de Haan, Technion Institute of Technology, Israel

"The paper states that a service system can be defined as a dynamic value-co creating configuration, which I view as a crucial contribution towards defining service research domain. I agree with the concept in general, though I believe that there is a need for a two-tier definition of service system: service system in the broad sense, that encompasses economy as a whole (which would correspond to the current definition) versus the service system definition in a more narrow sense, which would be focusing specifically on the service driven industries (as opposed to product driven ones). A comparison of service systems to product systems would give some further clarity to the boundaries of the domain."
- Ivanka Visujie, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

"The statement that a service system is a complex system that interacts in non-linear ways is true but should be described in more detail for the full impact to be adequately understood and appreciated. Again, examples would help. One example would be a hospital or other type of health care provider: multiple service providers (doctors, nurses, administrators, insurance, food, waste management) converge in a hierarchical manner on a single point to provide service to customers (health care). The quantity and quality of service vary dramatically based on the vast number of permutations and combinations of linear and non-linear interactions of the large number of service providers, the technologies they use, different business models they employ, and the changing demands of the customer over time (e.g., critical care to outpatient care). The challenges of innovating healthcare services, managing the service delivery, and ensuring service quality become apparent when the quantity and potential range of each of the input variables are made clear. Some of the special challenges of service innovation -- as opposed to product innovation -- become apparent when a map is made of the providers and the range of technologies and business models available to them over the course of the changing consumer demand."
- Robert D. Shelton, PRTM Management Consultants, USA

"From my perspective, this report serves as a very good foundational document. Generally speaking, it might be appropriate to add more examples to illustrate the breadth of services considered for this discussion. What are appropriate measurement frameworks for services? It would be helpful to consider adding a breakout of new style services offerings vs. the traditional service industries, for example, Amazon (new) vs. financial services (traditional). Doing so will highlight the acceleration and recent proliferation of service concepts vs. the longstanding ones. Consider adding a breakout of service revenue within the business sector as a percent of total revenue. (SSPA has the breakout for s/w and computer electronic industries; it illustrates the significant and unrecognized revenue contribution from services in traditional product companies.) It's unclear why software metrics and product & software architecture are included. Calling out software development -- and not product development -- does not seem logical. One suggestion is to expand service management to include actual "service delivery" - not just supply capacity management and demand management. Service delivery is the actual provisioning or delivery of a service to the end customer; it seems to be omitted in the discussion."
- Rachel Berg, PRTM Management Consultants, USA

"I've attached a 2x2 taxonomy of service (degree of co-creation high/low and physical/informational services) that I hope can be helpful. The definition of service is too broad (includes manufacturing) and somewhat vague. I observe that 'service' and 'knowledge' are used interchangeably in the document. The growing sophistication of customer requirements is important. Everyone knows service is multidisciplinary – how can you go beyond the obvious?"
- Takashi Kikuchi, Tokyo Institute of Technology

"There is also the need to define 'service science' better. Service management and service engineering are clear, but calling the service domain a science needs a better explanation. Service is an applied science, but calling it an applied science confusing it with service engineering. Computing has a similar problem, but there is a clear delineation between computer science and computer engineering. Computer engineering is concerned with the implementation of computer science and computer science is fairly well defined. This document does not sufficiently define the science of services to do the same for this domain.

Some of key questions about services include ways of reconstructing the dynamics of service systems from data and ways of characterizing the emergent properties that arise from the combination of the various building blocks.

We agree with the foundations for the development of service sciences listed in the document. In developing the Service Systems Engineering program at Michigan Tech, a key challenge was to define and implement courses that represent the common core of the field."
- Leonard J. Bohmann, Michigan Tech University, USA

"I provide as a separate open PowerPoint file the BÉSAME architecture that we have designed and are using for developing the specific contents and learning instruments and strategies for our new master on SSME. This work is being undertaking jointly between UOC and IBM-Spain. Many people are already prepared, at least partially, as service adaptive innovators. Rather than a completely new paradigm which needs a big effort to be learned, the service mindset and service education can be presented as an important and strategic add-on or complement to prior education and competence. Congratulations for the report integrators. It must be very difficult to come out with such a quality document, from a two-day meeting where many people gave their contributions. I wished I could have attended the Cambridge meeting, but I am glad that I could comment on the report."
- Joan A. Pastor Collado, Open University of Catalonia, Spain

"The document is very well designed and presents the case clearly and concisely. I appreciated the effort to clarify what the document was trying to say to each of the constituent groups: industry, academia, and government policy-makers. Service systems are defined well, together with the challenges that they face in improving operations and quality. The recommendations are succinct and well thought through. My overall view, however, is that the word 'innovation' is somewhat misused in the title and then throughout the document. While the demand for service improvement is clearly recognized, it is 'innovation' that is proposed to address these challenges. To me, innovation is more directly tied to the development and initiation of NEW services. What this document is actually talking about, in my view, is addressing the need of the service sector for operations and quality improvement, in addition to continuing innovation in the sense of developing new services."
- Louis E. Freund, San José State University, USA

"This paper places significant emphasis on service systems, rather than on the service itself, which is the driver of the system. Consider: service concept -> service process -> service system. How one defines the service delivery process determines how the supporting service system is defined. Technology, especially IT, has enabled businesses/ organizations to more broadly define or expand the scope of the service delivery process (for example, service business processes), which now not only cross the traditional functional areas within an organization, but also often cross organizational boundaries. As a result, the boundaries that define a given service system are determined by the scope of the service delivery process that the system supports. It is the transdisciplinary nature of the service delivery process that requires complex, transdisciplinary service systems to properly support them. (At the Frontiers in Services meeting, Bo Edvardsson stated that the first step in developing/ innovating a new service is to define the service concept. This is followed by designing the service process that 'operationalizes' the concept, which in turn is followed by developing the service system that is needed to support the process. Thus: service concept -> service process -> service system.

I find some confusion throughout the paper in the use of the words 'sustain' and 'sustainability.' I think you need to make a stronger, clearer case for service innovation. The combination of the globalization of business, which has shifted the power in the market place from the producers to the consumers and consequently driven down profit margins, coupled with the growth in services in all corners of the world, has created a demand for service innovation with the goal of increasing the customer value proposition.

Profit is discussed here several times as one of the goals. However there are a large number of non-profit services including governments, healthcare, education, NGOs, etc. that do not have a profit motive, but nevertheless will benefit from service innovation.

The paper suggests that the world in actually one interconnected mega-service system. Although this may be true, it does not necessarily provide the manager at the individual organizational level with specific guidelines for managing his/her organization (not unlike the study of macro economics provides minimal insights to managers today). Thus service managers and service designers need to define the scope of the service they want to provide as a service (delivery) process (or business process). Once the service process has been defined, the next step is to define/ identify all of the different elements of the service system that are needed to support the process."
- Mark M Davis, Bentley College, USA

"An issue that must be explored in a service-based economy is the impact on intellectual property (IP) rights. One might argue that IP as it relates to services is more about execution (people, process and culture, etc.) than has been the case in a product-based economy, where protecting design, features and functionality is critical. To some degree the traditional thinking about IP may be slowing necessary value creation and progress in a service-based economy where the "ability to execute" becomes more of the differentiator than the idea of what to execute on. For business, the need to create a services R&D function has become as critical as it has traditionally been for the product side of the technology industry and will require us to develop business models to quantify the economic impact of service quality. For example, the impact of quality investments on service economics and, as applicable the economics of the products that the services are meant to address. The absence of these models is a major inhibitor and unless generated will no doubt restrict the funding of service research and operational improvement/innovation. Such models are made more difficult by current financial reporting practices which place product and services P&L in different silos disconnecting the cost of the investment from its benefit. Once complete, these models must be shared with the financial and shareholder communities to create the needed 'air cover' which permit executives to justify the optimal investments in service."
- JB Wood, and Tom Pridham, Service Research Innovation Initiative

"This well written and well structured document with clear goals (more adaptive innovators, more integrated service systems research and creating awareness about this in policy circles and among other key-stakeholders) comes timely. Managers, entrepreneurs, policy-makers and academic researchers are 'discovering' one by one the service innovation theme and increasingly seem to understand that service innovation will drive strategic renewal, competitiveness and economic growth (as much as even more widely affecting welfare and well being of individuals). The paper explains especially the shift that is needed in and between the various (silo-ed) disciplines to ultimately contribute to the understanding of service systems and the development of an interdisciplinary Service Science.

Nevertheless, some areas need to be the basis for further discussion and debate: (1) The paper suggests that it is feasible to create a grand unified theory of service innovation and service. We do agree with the need for more integration and interdisciplinary collaboration. However, defining such a high level of achievement will easily lead to disappointment and less fruitful debates. (2) The development research and education in service management shows a focus on certain management functions: marketing, operations and (some) HRM. What seems to be underdeveloped is 'strategic management and business policy for services'. (3) The paper focuses mostly on the need for service research and service education and how to develop these further and less so on the need to provide industry with perspectives, models, tools and tricks to work on service innovation. What firms - again in our view - want is a logic for managing service innovation in value chains and networks. (4) The paper is poor on policy suggestions other than the need for financing service science and service education, develop fine service statistics and move towards citizen-centric design of government service systems. In our view governments in many countries are currently discussing appropriate responses to the service innovation challenge. (5) The paper does point at the servitization of manufacturing firms. In our view this could be emphasized much more, not least as this is one of the most persuasive arguments in discussions with policy-makers on the rationale for service innovation policies. (6) The paper summarizes five business challenges for service research. All five seem to be relevant and interesting for research. From our perspective one issue could be added. This is the issue of growth and growth strategies in relation to innovation. (7) Finally we observe that reference is made to service systems as providing challenges to mostly education, business and policy-makers. We think that it would be helpful to also point at the opportunities service innovations are offering for individuals (as students, as citizens, as consumers, as patients etc.) and the need to involve them more actively in the way (new) services are shaped and delivered."
- Pim den Hertog, Director Dialogic Innovation & Interaction, Utrecht, The Netherlands, Mark W. de Jong, Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam & Director Technologisch TopInstituut Telematica, Enschede, The Netherlands, and Wietze van der Aa, Director Wageningen Business School, Wageningen University & Research Centre, The Netherlands

"The Cambridge/IBM Service Innovation report seemed to have two simultaneous goals: 1) Explaining and promoting the SSME initiative 2) Defining a view of service systems and service innovation that might support future research.

Although worthwhile, these two goals are somewhat inconsistent. Promoting the SSME initiative is about encouraging broad participation across business and academia. Defining terms to guide future research bears the risk of expressing ideas in ways that many practitioners and academics may not fully appreciate.

Three general comments summarize my views about what I believe are important shortcomings of the draft that was distributed in October 2007:

(1) Many of the definitions and generalizations about service are unnecessarily complex. For example, page 5 of the draft says: "A service system is a dynamic value co-creating configuration of resources, including people, technology, organizations, and shared information ) language, laws, measures, and methods), all connected internally and externally by value propositions, with the aim to consistently and profitably meet the customer's needs better than competing alternatives." One might wonder how that statement applies to an internally directed service system such as hiring employees, reimbursing travel expenses, or designing a new offering to the market.

(2) There is a confusion between inherent characteristics of all services versus service dimensions that call for design decisions. For example, the definition of service system in the comment above says that service systems "aim to consistently and profitably meet the customer's needs." It is more accurate to say that consistency is a design dimension. Consistency is very important for some service systems and unimportant for others. The designer of a service system should decide the extent to which consistency is important and should be encouraged or enforced. A similar observation about inherent characteristics of service versus dimensions of service applies to other characteristics such as dynamic, complex, connected internally and externally, and concerned with profitability.

(3) Based on the way the Cambridge/IBM Service Innovation report is written, readers may conclude that service science is an abstract academic exercise rather than a pragmatic attempt to influence the world. For example, the report seems to view the entire global landscape of business and society as a giant service system. This view is not useful because there is no way for service science to analyze, design, or influence a system that has billions of participants and customers with billions of different personal concerns and interests. In another example, a reference to optimal investment seems questionable; if we barely understand how service systems operate, mathematical optimality is more like a dream than a realistic goal for almost all service systems.

Listed next are four major points based on using a work system approach for thinking about services and service systems. I believe that these points frame the discussion of service systems and service innovation in a way that is more pragmatic and more useful than the view expressed in the Cambridge draft. These comments are based on a stream of research related to what might be called "work system theory." Recent publications related to work system theory include a 2008 IBM Systems Journal article, "Service System Fundamentals: Work System, Value Chain, and Life Cycle" (http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/471/alter.html ), and a 2006 book, "The Work System Method: Connecting People, Processes, and IT for Business Results."

Point 1: An integrated view of service systems should apply to the complete spectrum of services: services for external customers and for internal customers; automated, IT-reliant, and non-automated services; customized, semi-customized, and non-customized services; personal and impersonal services; repetitive and non-repetitive services; long-term and short-term services; and services with varying degrees of self-service responsibilities. There is no reason to limit service systems to those systems that are dynamic, are complex, require consistency, strive for profit, serve only external customers, and so on.

Point 2: Service systems are work systems. Therefore frameworks and concepts from work system theory should be applicable for describing, evaluating, and analyzing service systems. A work system is a system in which human participants and/or machines perform work using information, technology, and other resources to produce products and services for internal or external customers. Almost all significant work systems in today's organizations are IT-reliant. Any work system can be summarized and analyzed using the work system framework, whose nine elements include: processes and activities, participants, information, technologies, products and services produced, customers, environment, infrastructure, and strategies.

Service systems are work systems that produce services. By Vargo and Lusch's (2004) definition, service is "the application of specialized competences (knowledge and skills) through deeds, processes, and performances for the benefit of another entity or the entity itself." By that definition, almost any purposeful system within a business or governmental entity can be viewed as a service system because competencies are being applied to produce something for someone.

The body of knowledge that applies to work systems in general should also apply to service systems. Viewing a work system in terms of the nine elements of the work system framework provides a way to organize the relevant body of knowledge, much of which comes from complementary disciplines, such as:

• Marketing (for customers and products and services),
• Operations management and operations research (for processes and activities)
• Psychology and organizational behavior (for participants)
• Information science and accounting (for information)
• Computer science (for technology and infrastructure)
• Managerial environment (for environment)
• Management and operational strategy (for strategies).

The work system framework and related ideas provide additional ideas plus an organizing approach for combining and integrating ideas from those various disciplines.

Point 3: Service systems may have internal or external customers. In contrast, the Cambridge draft seems to assume that the customers of service systems are the firm's customers, thereby ignoring internally directed service systems through which every firm operates.

Work system theory assumes that customers are human, although, as noted in Alter (2008) based on an article by Umapathy and Purao (2007), many of the basic ideas related to service systems directed at people may be applicable to Web services and other automated processes that operate invisibly in the depths of computerized infrastructures.

Point 4: Service innovation may involve changes in anywhere from one to nine of the elements in the work system framework. A change in just one element, such as the business process or the technology used, might be a significant service innovation. However, because service systems are systems whose various components are related, changes in one element usually involve or require changes in other elements. For example, a change in a business process often involves change in technology and/or information and/or participant knowledge and skill.

Service innovations may involve any combination of: incremental value for customers (small innovations), radically better value for customers (large innovations), service system changes that improve the provider's efficiency, cost, quality, or reliability whether or not customers observe the improvements directly. There is no reason to assume that service innovation is always motivated by or linked to competitive advantage. Many service innovations are directed at internal customers or at customers of governmental or non-profit organizations for which competitive advantage may not be a major issue. Thus, the basic ideas of service innovation are about intentional changes in service systems."
- Steven Alter, University of San Francisco, USA

"One area that I have an intense passion - you covered - but would like to advocate is governance (organizational structures) that best support service systems. Also, at my university we are moving the operations course to a service focus - driving from the quantitative side will be a most effective approach."
- Tom Griffin, Nova Southeastern University, USA

"A wonderful paper, one of the best to date on SSME. I would add the necessity to define a taxonomy and the development of a methodology as pre-requisites in the study of service science. In 2.3 it would mention that this study is applicable across all defined industries and sectors. The development of soft skills in the potential audience is key to the success of service science. For section 5, one approach that has been successful in SSME program implementations is recommending academic joint programs within universities (business, engineering, psychology, and other schools)."
- Paul Kontogiorgis, IBM, USA

"This Cambridge SSME paper is important advancement in the evolution of Service Science. I urge service researchers, professors and service professionals to join the Service Research and Innovation Community (www.thesrii.org) and through collaboration, help cultivate new service science theories and frameworks."
-Dianne Fodell, IBM, US

"The paper gives a very clear and comprehensive description of the role and definition of an "adaptive innovator" - a term used for the first time to describe a service professional. This term has the right blend of creative communication for marketing the requirements of service innovation to the consumption and understanding of the masses. The discussion on the 3 approaches of bridging the gap between academic disciplines is a unique and enlightening perspective on giving recommendations for education. However the paper lacks a separate discussion on defining approach for recommendations to business and policy and launches itself directly and immediately into the recommendations after an academic argument.

In service businesses in emerging countries the gaps that are broadly identified by various field studies are:

• Scalability of the service business model,
• Customer retention,
• Low penetration,
• Low customer base,
• Acceptance of technology to scale to higher levels of service,
• Service Quality,
• Inefficient supply chain,
• Enhancing employee utilization,
• Providing information on demand."

Zaheer Travadi, IBM India