Coevolving Innovations

Towards the development of a science of service systems I’ve been facilitating a group of senior researchers, internationally.  I’ve posted a presentation from a workshop in early September at the UKSS meeting in Oxford that reflects the current status of this project.

The results of this year-long project will be presented at the ISSS annual meeting scheduled for July 2010 in Waterloo, Canada.  The conversation started with an organizational meeting at ISSS Brisbane in July 2009.  Key face-to-face meetings when content will be developed include …

• in March 2010, a workshop supported by the Service Innovation Educational Program at the Tokyo Institute of Technology (similar to the invited workshop in 2008 and in 2009 ; and
• in April 2010, a team participating in the (Fuschl) Conversation hosted by the International Federation for Systems Research.  (In a break from tradition, the meeting will probably not be at Fuschl am See this year, but another location in Austria).

The essential attributes of participants are an interest in service science and systems science … plus a tolerance for jet lag, or at least the willingness to work with collaborator spanning 14 time zones.  The core of the researcher team are drawn from among the officers of the International Society for the Systems Sciences.  Read more... (239 words, 1 image, estimated 57 secs reading time)

The Service Innovation Educational Program at the Tokyo Institute of Technology hosted an “Open Seminar on Service Systems Science” (with a flyer in PDF) — as well as a private “Invited Workshop on Services Science, Management and Engineering” — in February 2009.

I’ve just noticed that much of the content is totally opaque to people who don’t read Japanese, so I’ve posted my (English-language) digest of the meetings on the Coevolving Innovation Commons.  The text is incomplete, but it at least provides a minimal sketch of some of the ideas discussed. (Digital photographs help, too!).  Speakers include:

• Ken Senoh, University of Tokyo
• Marianne Kosits, IBM
• Klaus-Peter Fahnrich, University of Leipzig; and
• Yonekura Hiroyuki, Gourmet Navigator; and
• a panel including Gary Metcalf, Jennifer Wilby, and Hiroshi Deguchi,
• moderated by Kyoichi Jim Kijima.

The 2009 meetings were an annual extension of the 2008 21st Century CoE Symposium, and the first Invited Workshop on SSME.

With many of the researchers coming from a perspective of systems science, the trend has been to work out some of the ideas on an emerging science of service systems.

I’ve been approaching the development of an emerging science of service systems from a background of the systems sciences.  Describing and designing service systems — not only in business, but also in the public sector — includes the evolution and development both of human organization and of technology.  A large body of knowledge on social systems science was developed in the post-war industrial age, e.g. research conducted by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (1941-1989).  This work has been categorized in three perspectives:

• the socio-psychological perspective;
• the socio-technical perspective; and
• the socio-ecological perspective.

The socio-ecological perspective emerged while facing cases where “von Bertalanffy’s concept of open systems” was not sufficient to deal with the degree of change in the environment.

We gradually realized that if we were usefully to contribute to the problems that faced the cases mentioned above we had to extend our theoretical framework. In particular, we had to discard the  assumption that systems or individuals could not know their environments and the unipolar focus on the system, or individual as system. In a positive sense we had to theorize about the evolution of the environment  and the consequences of this evolution for the constituent  systems.  (Emery 1997, pp. 38-39)

In 1967, Fred Emery summarized needs that the social sciences should have prepared to meet over the next thirty years.  More than a decade beyond that, we now have the Internet, globalization, and the prospect of an instrumented, interconnected and intelligent “smarter planet”.

The bridge in social ecology from the Tavistock legacy to current times is made in the 2008 volume, Business Planning for Turbulent Times , edited by Rafael Ramírez, John W. Selsky, and Kees van der Heijden.  The collection of papers is a culmination of the Oxford Futures Forum 2005, with a focus on the intersection between social ecology and scenario practice.

… we consider the future through the spectacles of the scenario approach.  While we do that, we reflect on our practice in the light of the perspective offered by a school of thought in the social and organizational sciences call social ecology, in particular its description of the ‘turbulent environment’.  We will show how scenarios and social ecology inform each other ….  [p. 4]

This volume doesn’t directly address service systems.  However, the foundations from social ecology provoke some consideration for service systems.  Reshuffling the sequencing of the chapters, I found myself reflecting on on the following five ideas:

• A. The problem: an addiction to prediction
• B. Sustaining organizational systems in turbulent environments
• C. Techniques for envisioning future systems
• D. Changing systems
• E. Shared value and engagement

The book has strong experience reports on scenario practices that may interest other readers.  I’m particularly focused on how advances in the understanding of social ecology can advance an emerging science of service systems.  Let’s expound on the five ideas.  Read more... (8708 words, 1 image, estimated 34:50 mins reading time)

A. The problem: an addiction to prediction

Over the past few months, you may have noticed some changes in this Coevolving Innovations blog, or the Distractions, Reflections blog. It’s been two years since I wrote “the why and how of establish your web persona“, and “installing and customizing WordPress on your own domain“.  Those reflected the state-of-the-art in 2007, which is a long time in technology.  To explain these changes, I’ll relate my thinking in three parts:

• 1. What do I want with my web persona?
• 2. How has the technology changed (in ways that I didn’t foresee)?
• 3. What have I done with my web activity?

These topics are described from the viewpoint of an “advanced blogger”.  New technologies emerge continuously, and I try many of them out.  I use some tools that novices find cumbersome, but that’s the way that I continue to learn.

1. What do I want with my web persona?

My first blog entries date back to October 2005, and they’re still available on the web.  In December 2006, I split my professional persona (mostly serious writing) from my photoblogging (easier on the eyes and brain), particularly for readers who subscribe via e-mail rather than using an RSS reader.  During this period, my perspective on my web persona has been constant in three ways:

(a) I want people to find appropriate information about me

In the test of “googling myself”, I’m pretty satisfied that people can find me.  Actually, a searcher will find me in multiple places, and should be able to navigate to his or her specific interest.

(b) I want to post durable content that reflects my personality and style

A major complaint of people who don’t read blogs is that it seems that people blog about their cats, or what they had for lunch.  I try to minimize that.

I do use Twitter and Friendfeed for short commentary, Google Reader Shared Items for popular news, and Diigo and Delicious for social bookmarking.  Since I travel a lot, I use Brightkite to give people some sense of which city I’m in, and Dopplr for which cities where I have travel planned.

On my professional blog, I post content that isn’t appropriate for publishing in journals or ideas that I’m working out.  On my photoblog, I take care to crop and edit each photograph, rather than just uploading snapshots.  Read more... (1144 words, 1 image, estimated 4:35 mins reading time)

(c) I want clear ownership of (and access to) my content

Over the past 28 years, the International Federation for Systems Research has hosted a meeting that has become known as the Fuschl Conversation. The conversation was designed as an “anti-conference” by Bela H. Banathy. Rather than centering on presentations of completed papers, small groups meet in a low-stress setting to engage in generative conversation, creating new knowledge. To focus and energize the conversations, position papers are developed by each individual before the meeting, and proceedings are published following.

For 2008 — my third Fuschl Conversation — I was privileged to spend four days with Gary Metcalf, Jennifer Wilby, Allenna Leonard and Leonie Solomons. Here’s an abstract of our conversation:

For this Fuschl meeting in March 2008, a group was formed based on a call for individuals with experiences in both (a) systems research and practice, and (b) applications in industry, academia and/or public policy. All of the participants in Team 2 have exercised systems thinking applied in the social sciences, both in research/educational contexts and in applied/practice contexts. In the discussion, we shared a rich base of collective experiences working in multiple countries across four continents.

In retrospect, the conversation drew out insights in three areas:

• 1. Where does systems knowledge figure into the practice of social science practitioners?
• 2. How is systems knowledge applied with domain-specific knowledge?
• 3. When are domain-specific issues providing entry points into which systems knowledge becomes valuable?
• 4. How is the nature of systems knowledge coevolving with institutions (public, private, not-for-profit) and technology (wikis, blogs, voice over Internet)?

This report concludes with a reflection on the conversation process itself, in the setting of Fuschl.

A 7-page summary of the conversation is published in the downloadable proceedings of the meeting. As a teaser, here’s an outline.  Read more... (921 words, 1 image, estimated 3:41 mins reading time)

How is reading blogs different from reading e-mail and using search engines?

Most peers at my age — I’m a later era baby boomer, now called Generation Jones — are comfortable receiving e-mail and using search engines. This population hasn’t yet fully embraced social technologies such as blogs. This is changing slowly. Jeremiah Ohyang, in “How Baby Boomers Use Social Media“, describes that:

• 71% of younger boomers (age 43 to 52) in 2008 were active with social technologies, as compared to 52% in 2007, and
• 65% of older boomers (age 53 to 63) in 2008 were active with social technologies, as compared to 45% in 2007.

A further breakdown of the social technographic of boomers shows a bimodal (i.e. two-bump) distribution.

• The largest bump of boomers (67% and 62%) is readers as “spectators” of blogs and forums — probably arriving at the web site via a bookmark or a search engine.
• Of boomers reading blogs, fewer are “joiners” who maintain a profile on the web, or “collectors” who are receive updates as feeds.
• Contributing content, boomers show a smaller bump as 35% and 34% as “critics” who leave comments on blogs and forums.
• Less than half that number are “creators” who upload and publish primary content, which means bloggers under age 43 outnumber bloggers over age 43 in a ratio of 6-to-1.

What are boomers missing? They may not want to become authors (i.e. “creators” or “critics”). As “collectors”, however, they can become more productive readers. Moving into this segment requires (1) embracing the ethos of a blog reader, (2) adopting tools that streamline reading blogs, and (3) establishing a personal style for tracking content.

Boomers are comfortable with e-mail. E-mail is a person-centric way of receiving information. It’s easy to sort out the importance of content by the sender of the information. The widespread alternative on the Internet is content-centric search. Put some search terms into a browser, and locate information sources. It’s worth remembering, though, that the credibility, reliability and usefulness of web sources is better if you know and/or trust the author(s).

[Side note: I first encountered the idea of person-centric from a tweet by Luis Suarez, leading to an interview of Euan Semple by Joshua-Michele Ross, and then a 2007 interview of Euan Semple by David Weinberger. The person-centric approach is also evident in the Cattail project at IBM Research.]

Moving up to the level of a “collector” takes advantage of web feed technologies such as RSS or Atom. Web feeds enable a person-centric way of receiving information from web syndication, i.e. content made available through publishing on the Internet. A reader can subscribe to individuals from whom he or she wants to read more, and bypass the noise from unwanted search results and junk e-mail. Following the ideas of a trusted colleague is more productive than relying on an anonymous source found with a search engine.

The three behaviours of becoming a “collector” are described below.

(1) Blog readers socially engage with blog writers

Blogs are communications direct from a writer. Marshall McLuhan would probably describe blogs as a “hot medium” as compared to other “cooler” web content. In an April 2008 ACM CHI presentation and paper on “Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging”, Eric Baumer, Mark Sueyoshi and Bill Tomlinson (all at U.C. Irvine) find that blog readers have characteristic common practices:  Read more... (1732 words, 5 images, estimated 6:56 mins reading time)