چشم انداز علوم خدمات در نوآوری مدل کسب و کار

Using four basic principles of service science, we systematically explore value-proposition design as one type of business model innovation. Service science combines organization and human understanding with business and technological understanding to categorize and explain service systems, including how they interact and evolve to cocreate value. Our goal is to apply a scientific approach to advance design and innovation in service systems. Our foundation is service-dominant logic, which provides perspective, vocabulary, and assumptions on which to build a theory. Our basic theoretical construct is the service system, entities that are dynamic configurations of four kinds of resources. Our core principles center on the way value is computed within and among entities, how interaction is based on access to resources and their capabilities, and on how value computation and interaction depend on symbol processing and language guided by mutually agreed-to value propositions. In this context, service science can inform and accelerate value-proposition design by systematizing the search for adaptive advantages that improve existing offerings, create new offerings, or reconfigure the value-creating ecosystem.

The rise of globe-spanning service-based business models has transformed the way the world works. This transformation has been enabled by new information and communications technologies, specialization of businesses and professions, global regulations, and increased use of external service by entities at multiple scales (Wirtz & Ehret, 2012). Service innovation is now a key priority for nations, businesses, and citizens (Council on Competiveness, 2005). In this context, there is a growing awareness of the need for a new interdisciplinary science of service to help make innovation more systematic and more sustainable (Abe, 2005, Chesbrough and Spohrer, 2006, Horn, 2005, January 21, IBM Research, 2004, May 17–18, IfM and IBM, 2008, Maglio, Kieliszewski and Spohrer, 2010, Ostrom et al., 2010, Spohrer et al., 2007, UK Royal Society, 2009 and US Congress, 2007). Over the last two hundred years, and accelerating in recent decades, we have witnessed a rise and fall in resources allocated and interactions dedicated to local production of goods, with more reliance on increasingly complex cognitive and social interactions with others (Bell, 1973, Clark, 1940/1957, Fuchs, 1968, Levitt, 1976 and Pine and Gilmore, 1999). This represents the rise of the so-called “service sector” of the economy (Fitzsimmons & Fitzsimmons, 2010), and despite its obvious importance, many myths about the service sector persist, including: (1) productivity is stagnant in the service sector; (2) service sector jobs are low skill and low wage; (3) the service sector is all labor and little technology; (4) science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) graduates cannot find good jobs in the service sector; (5) service quality is subjective and resists systematic improvement; and (6) the service sector is too diverse to be studied systematically. These can all be easily refuted (see Spohrer & Maglio, 2010b). Business model innovation can aim at differentiation or cost advantage, often unguided by principles or theory (Zott & Amit, 2008). Similarly, value-proposition design can aim for adaptive advantages (improve existing offerings, create new offerings, or reconfigure the ecosystem), without taking proper account of constraints (Ricketts, 2007). Systematic techniques shift the key performance indicators (Anderson et al., 2007 and Womack and Jones, 2005), the field of competition (Kim & Mauborgne, 2005), toward adjacent spaces (Slywotzky, Wise, & Weber, 2003), toward open ecosystems (Chesbrough, 2006), away from the priorities of the past (Moore, 2011), or otherwise reconfigure the actors or rules of the game (Brandenburger & Nalebuff, 2007). These shifts and reconfigurations can lead to upward spirals in capabilities over time, or boom and bust cycles (Perez, 2003) or collapse entirely (Diamond, 2005). In this article, we present a new view of value-proposition design in the context of complex service systems, and particularly from the perspective of service science. We first describe our service science perspective, and then elaborate our four core principles of service science. In the end, we show how to apply our principles to value-proposition design and describe managerial implications of this approach.

Over the last four decades, service research pioneers from diverse disciplines, including marketing, operations and management, engineering and design, computing, economics, social sciences, and policy making have all made substantial contributions to our understanding of service. But these contributions must somehow be woven together if we are to understand service systems fully, and if we are to have the tools for effective service innovation to meet the complex business and societal challenges we face today with new business model innovations. In this paper, we have distilled four core principles of service science that we think can bridge the disciplines, connecting them to practitioner and policy-maker concerns related to the science, management, engineering, and design of service systems. As we see it, service science depends on service-dominant logic, which views all economic exchange as service-for-service exchange between entities that possess resource-based capabilities. Goods are simply mechanisms by which service system entities package their knowledge to easily distribute and share their capabilities with others across space, time, and scales. Therefore, we define service as value cocreation among distinct entities. To begin to make sense of value cocreation, we have described our four basic principles of service science: 1. Service system entities dynamically configure four types of resources. 2. Service system entities compute value given the concerns of multiple stakeholders. 3. The access rights associated with entity resources are reconfigured by mutually agreed-to value propositions. 4. Service system entities compute and coordinate actions with others through symbolic processes of valuing and symbolic processes of communicating. But we have merely repeated and clarified these here. It remains to be seen whether they will be truly useful and effective in helping to describe, understand, and ultimately increase value cocreation through new business model innovation as they are applied over time. In the context of our core principles of service science, value proposition design is a systematic search process that providers can perform to improve existing offerings, create new offerings, and reconfigure their ecosystems, for instance, through acquisitions, divestitures, and partnering. We have illustrated these points through IT outsourcing and other examples. The systematic search for innovation includes looking for adaptive advantages based on resource types (namely technology, people, organizations, and shared information), stakeholder concerns (including provider, customer, authority, and competitor concerns such as productivity, quality, compliance, sustainable innovation), access rights (to resources that are owned, leased, shared, or proprietary), and symbolic processes (of valuing and communication). The service science community is working on new tools and educational programs that will improve the ability of service science professionals and others to make value-proposition design an even more systematic search over time. For managers, there are three main benefits of viewing value-proposition design as systematic search in accordance with the core principles of service science: 1. Managers can systematically reconfigure internal operations and customer and supplier interactions to improve existing offerings to existing and new customers; 2. Managers can systematically reconfigure internal operations and customer and supplier interactions to create new offerings for existing and new customers; and 3. Managers can systematically evaluate broader ecosystem reconfigurations (through acquisitions, divestitures, and partnering) in seeking to improve or enhance overall value propositions. To do this, managers will need new and better tools to apply the principles of service science in a manner that co-elevates innovativeness of entities (their firms, customers, and suppliers) equitably, sustainably, and resiliently. Creating these tools is our current priority (e.g., Spohrer and Giuiusa, 2012, May 12 and Tan et al., 2012).