"This paper stimulates stakeholders to make them aware of why service science is important and how we may achieve it. More specifics would help; for example, technology introduction in healthcare requires social-organizational rearrangements. Are service systems too broad to model? Some are capital (infrastructure) intensive, some are labor intensive, and some are knowledge intensive – more categories will help."
– Sungho Lee, Samsung Economic Research Institute, South Korea

"I applaud efforts to make 'service science' into a field and catalyst for progress. 'Service' provides context, meaningful use, and value for the products of agriculture, manufacturing, information systems, and many other endeavors. Society needs to focus on and improve the services individuals, organizations, and coalitions provide each other. It is time to develop 'service science' – much as it was time in the 1990s to develop 'governmental service to the public' – into a robust topic and focus for appreciated activity.
- Thomas J. Buckholtz, independent consultant (former co-CIO, USA federal government Executive Branch), Silicon Valley, California, USA

"If SSME graduates are to be truly inter-disciplinary, they should have firm grounding in human behavior, human psychology, service or system design, systems analysis and exposure to multiple application areas."
- Sunderesh S. Heragu, University of Louisville, USA

"The comparison with physics, chemistry, and biology is not appropriate, as these three are objective; service science is subjective. There is a lack of understanding about the role of human beings as a source of uncertainty in systems."
- Rajkumar Roy, Cranfield University, UK

"We all live in a world of services. As patients, clients, patrons, students, consumers, etc. we depend on the services of others for our prosperity, well being, and quality of life. Yet we lack a deeper, fundamental understanding of the configurations, relationships, and dynamics of people, technology, and resources that comprise our systems of service. In fact, despite the dramatic shift toward services in many economies of the world, service systems (such as the US health care system) could well benefit from a rigorous scientific, management and engineering approaches to improve their performance, timeliness, and 'service.'

Further, service innovation would also benefit from a more fundamental understanding of service systems, and sustaining that innovation through education and business practices. Historically, science, engineering and management (SEM) have helped revolutionize the art of MAKING things of value. Industrial revolution(s) have occurred in a wide range of fields due to the contributions of SEM that have taken data and knowledge and transformed them into things of value that we use in our lives. Today, a similar shift has occurred, and science, engineering and management are poised to help revolutionize the art of DOING things of value.

At UC Berkeley, and at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (a four-campus State-funded Institute of Science and Innovation), we have invested heavily in the field of services, both in research and in the curriculum. Success will come from our graduates: We believe that the workforce of tomorrow will need a fundamental understanding of the dynamics of people, technology and resources to allow them to contribute to and thrive in a services world, and we believe that graduates of our program will work to make health care safer and more efficient, improve the flexibility and innovation of large financial houses, effectively marshal resources in times of disaster, help the poor move up the social ladder, or create new service business. Their abilities to effectively work with complexity, engineer robustness and resilience, embed adaptability and flexibility, etc. in to their chosen service systems will be the key marker of our success in their education and training.

We strongly support this effort, and we would urge introspection on the deep impact such a field can have on the fundamental aspects and systems that we all take for granted in our lives."
- Ravi Nemena, Director SSME, CITRIS Program, UC Berkeley

"It's not easy to comment because of the abstractness of the content. More examples would help. Quality needs to continually go up just to keep up with inflation of expectations. The idea of making the students have the skill of service science is good. But specialists or professors don't have enough time to gather and discuss, so before gathering students, organizers who think we should be able to do something interesting have to have the case of success of service science. Addressing the knowledge gap and the skill gap are important, but at the same time I think addressing generation gap and difference of the environment of childhood are also important. Thus thinking of service, the important thing is not only the integration of the specialties, but issues of fairness or access equality."
- Asako Murakami, University of Tokyo

"I think the document is full of interesting concepts and I fully support the aim of this paper. It is very interesting and comprehensive. Congratulations. According to my understanding, there are several issues:

a) Services Systems may be considered as activity systems towards an objective or a function which is co-produced between service provider and customer. According to systems theory, service Systems may deal with its dynamics to create and absorb value taking into account: a) processes involved; b) the interaction between "components"; c) the "boundary" definition; and d) control and management role. I think Services and Innovation are broad concepts. It's relationship with Service Systems, too. I think that we need to clarify what kind of services and why Innovation in Service Systems is necessary? Maybe (1) to design and create new ones; or (2) make the existing ones more efficient to ensure economic sustainability; or (3) more customer oriented

b) The document emphasizes the idea of "service design" as an engineering activity. The design of services may require the idea of how to design an activity. Therefore, maybe it's useful to think in the systemic "components" such as "interactivity design" and "co-production design" creating and exploiting relationships. If the intention is to focus on IT Services, recent taxonomies in Services (see Link and Siegel, 2007) show: supply-dominated; production intensive, science based and engineering services. All services may fit into this mindset? All services can be designed with these principles?

c) At an operational level, and according to my research, service managers are concern about how to fill the gap between ex-ante expectation and ex-post customer satisfaction based on value for money which implies the appropriate dynamic design of resource allocation and mobilization in order to keep services a profitable business.

d) I think also that literature recognizes the Services are defined by its intangibility, simultaneity, specificity, interactiveness, level of standardization vs. heterogeneity (or variability) and perishability. In consequence, I see Service Systems as Information Systems where one key resource is information but also the knowledge and criteria to act according to information involved and exchanged. I would like to see more stress in Information Systems for that reason.

e) Service Innovation is a much more abstract outcome than in manufacturing and difficult to measure according to literature reviewed. This I think should be present in the research agenda. Service Innovation may imply operational and strategic issues. The way innovation may affect to previous ideas I think is a major (and exciting) challenge which I have suggested b). I think the approach for Innovation may be interdisciplinary taking into account: 1) emotional aspects; 2) expectations; 3) relationships and interdependence which may suggest institutionalization but also the idea of complexity. Therefore, I think Innovation may deal with (1) social and political context; (2) culture; (3) system control (at operational and strategic levels of analysis) and (4) management skills. I would emphasize, as suggested, "service levers" such as relationships, knowledge and customer interactions.

f) I think also that there is the need to include the myriad of potential workers in service systems both "white" and "blue" collar. In addition to that, I think the document should take into consideration the problems related with people mobility and off-shoring, like the Service Directive issued by European Union this year and how affect how service employees may work across countries."
- Javier Busquets, ESADE Business School, Spain

"The success of SSME is a key to improve service performance as well as service qualities and values (include "quality management (1,2,3,4)" at p8 list). It is important to recognize that service systems are not consisted from only technologies, but methods to enable technologies, management, and social knowledge. We need to include these aspects, and integrate them to service systems. Technologies can be created by technical community, but it always needs customers who utilize them to create and realize their values.

Things around technologies are created together with various members, such as customers, technical and business professionals, and researchers. Roles of service researchers include not only create new technologies, but abstract created values in service activities and formalize them. Since SSME researchers extend and transform their research areas, so that its supporting environment, such as its academic and business organization and management system, also needs to explore."
- Yuriko Sawatani, IBM Service Research, Japan

"Service science should consider standards associations as stakeholders. The rights of the individual need to be considered in service system design."
- Syamant Sandhir, Futurescape, India

"Industrial service (e.g. preventive maintenance based availability service) of manufacturing companies is creating added value for the customer by focusing on selected process segment and by performing even better than the customer. This requires continuous improvement and excellence through new service innovations. This is not possible without thorough understanding and continuous monitoring of the life cycle requirements of customer's process and values. Understanding all aspects of psychology of customer's service experience, values and full revenue model is prerequisite for successful life cycle industrial service business. Emotional factors are strongly emphasized. The value of services has to be made so simple to understand that they are easy to buy. Visualization and high touch are important.

Manufacturing companies, which are expanding their product offering into the field of life cycle services in the customers' facilities, are facing increasing complexity when executing continuous business transition. Service production is decentralized: process control, design and information management are more challenging in the network of customer, partners and subcontractors. In order to achieve fluent life cycle business transition and maintain competitiveness, it is necessary to mould the service innovation process into the customer's process."
- Vesa Salminen, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland

"Mention qualitative approaches (given subjective nature of value). Drivers: With increased prosperity, people have increased availability of time, money and other resources for pursuits beyond material satisfaction and higher education levels. We would say something like "Aim of service science is better understanding of the inherent dynamics of services systems, to allow for more informed strategic choices (instead of the "simplicity" mentioned in current version) and more effective tactical implementations (instead of "complexity" mentioned in current version)." Why now: (1) Environmental crisis (need more emphasis on low-material-and-energy intangibles), (2) Growing worldview gaps (integrate BOP 1 billion with rest of world; and here-and-now-materialism versus material-denial-and-spiritual-afterlife societies; can service science mediate?). Value-creating resources—be careful given customer-created value (only value in pairs, not in things). Soft skills needed might include EQ training, meditation and other forms of self reflection and self awareness. Be clear about what is meant by "entrepreneurial" – is this starting new companies or rather new ideas within large companies, or both?"
- Yoshinori Fujikawa and Carl Kay, Hitotsubashi University, Japan