Coevolving Innovations

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 was my last day as an employee of IBM Canada.  I have been with company for almost 28 years, and was offered an option for an “early retirement” as an exit from the organization.  However, I expect that I will continue to work (and study) elsewhere for at least 10 to 15 years.  Since I’m not expecting to draw from the Canada Pension Plan any time soon, the label of “retirement” as applied by the company isn’t the same as that as applied by the government.  Statistics Canada has three categories in the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics.

• Career employment means having employment income or Employment Insurance (EI) benefits, no pension income and not reporting retirement as the major activity.
• Bridge employment means having employment income or EI benefits, pension income or reporting retirement as the major activity, and not out of the labour force for more than six consecutive months at the end of the year.
• Retirement means having pension income or self-identifying as retired with no employment income or EI benefits, or having pension income or self-identifying as retired with employment income or EI benefits, but out of the labour force for more than six consecutive months at the end of the year [Hébert and Luong 2008].

I don’t intend to take myself out of the work force in the near future.  It seems as though it’s not uncommon for retirement-eligible individuals to work.

Chart B: The prevalence of bridge employment doubles after age 60

Not only are the numbers of age 50 to 69 individuals active in bridge employment increasing, but so is the proportion increasing with aging of the baby boom cohort.

There’s three ways (and probably more) in which I could portray myself:

• 1. A human capital spin-off
• 2. A free agent (learner)
• 3. An encore career

Each of these descriptions has a balance between accuracy and understandability (by the layman).

1. A human capital spin-off

A spin-off is normally viewed in an organizational sense, but there’s little in most definitions that couldn’t be extended to individuals.  One description comes from research specifying a base taxonomy.  Read more... (2222 words, 2 images, estimated 8:53 mins reading time)

For the 1st International Conference on Human Side of Service Innovation, I had been asked  by Kelly Lyons to contribute an article for a session on Frameworks for Service Systems.  I had worked on the article in fall 2011, but leading a 6-day conference in San Jose immediately before the start of the HSSE meeting in San Francisco made completion improbable.  Having prepared an abstract and outline for “Is That Affordance Essential? Pathology in service systems and redesigns for sustainability”, I couldn’t squeeze in an article by the winter publication deadline. I was, however, prepared to share a presentation on research-in-progress.  I expect that I’ll be able to finish this research paper over the next year, (and hope that I’ll get a longer time slot to present than the 15 minutes allotted at HSSE).

The original abstract for my presentation reads:

A service systems may exhibit pathologies, i.e. an abnormal, unhealthy, maladjusted or inefficient state that is maintained in a living system for a significant period. Correcting a pathology may require a history-making change where significant capital investment is needed.

As a way of reframing the definition of a service system, interactions between parties are expressed as an interaction where a provider offers affordances and clients may have varying levels of ability. The needs and expectations of high-ability clients can be contrasted to those of low-ability clients. Portraying affordances as essential or discretionary may enable segmentation of client target groups into coproducing or full-service arrangements.

Some example service systems, in municipal services, pension plans and open source communities are described to illustrate considerations of pathologies towards potential pursuits of sustainability.

Alternative approaches to correct the pathologies are related to theories of ecological complexity, in panarchies and supply-side sustainability. Directions for further development are outlined.

The slides are available on the Coevolving Commons.  The 15 minutes gave enough time to describe some motivating cases, and then work my way down a list of definitions supplemented by pointers to originating sources.

As the presentation was ending, time was allowed for one question.  Jim Spohrer asked about the definition of affordances (with abilities) that I used.  My initial response wasn’t sufficient, so he probed some more.  A moment later, I figured out that Don Norman — who is renowned for the idea of affordances in The Design of Everyday Things — was sitting beside Jim.  We didn’t get a chance to complete that conversation, as the next speaker came on.  Not recognizing Norman in the audience probably saved me from being intimidated and more self-conscious during the presentation.

While I had researched Norman’s view on affordances previously, the citation that is in the working paper is not in the 15-minute presentation.  In an essay on “Affordances and Design” on Norman’s web site, he revises the label of “affordances” in his book to “perceived affordances”.  Read more... (1163 words, estimated 4:39 mins reading time)

In the service management literature, a “theory of the offering” is an alternative to a “theory of the firm”. Leading up to the ISSS San Jose 2012 meeting, Rafael Ramirez asked if I was aware of a 1989 chapter on “A Theory of the Offering: Toward a Neo-Industrial Business Strategy” by Normann and Ramirez. I responded that no, I had not seen that. My understanding of offering comes from the 2006 Business Orchestration book by Johan Wallin, the 2000 Prime Movers book by Ramirez and Wallin, and the 1994 Designing Interactive Strategy book by Normann. These are rooted in an appreciation of distinctions between a cause-effect relation and a producer-product relation (of coproducers) from the 1972 On Purposeful Systems book by Ackoff, based on the 1959 Experience and Reflection book by Singer and Churchman.

I’ve always been a fan of the perspective of service systems taken by Normann and Ramirez, as the thinking is well-aligned with systems theory. This 1989 paper enlightened me on the context in which offering was first developed, that I missed in reading the later writings:

• 1. “Service management” evolved to focus on systems in the secondary (production) sector, over the tertiary (service) sector.
• 2. A “theory of the offering” is a not about measuring economic activity, but is instead an alternative to a “theory of the firm”.
• 3. Distinctions made between product and service businesses in the early 1980s gradually became less relevant.
• 4. Sellers help customers create value for themselves, as co-producers (and potentially as competitors).
• 5. Offerings can be viewed in three strategic dimensions of depth (of coproduction), range (of products and services), and choice (as bundled to unbundled).
• 6. Transformations in a neo-industrial business strategy can be enumerated as single, dual and triple changes in the three strategic dimensions.

The full article is worth reading. Only snippets are provided here, with the hope that interested readers might look to their libraries, or request a softcopy from Rafael Ramirez. My assessment is that the 1989 book is difficult to find in libraries, and should be considered for republication somewhere more accessible.

1. “Service management” evolved to focus on systems in the secondary (production) sector, over the tertiary (service) sector

In the emergence of “service science”, there’s always been some confusion across the labels of “service”, “services” and “service sector”. The 1984 Service Management book by Richard Normann, can serve as one foundation. I have been advocating the clarity of a label of “service systems”, which has led to “service systems science”. Normann and Ramirez saw similar challenges in labelling in 1989.  Read more... (5384 words, estimated 21:32 mins reading time)

In February, I returned to Finland to teach the Systemic Thinking for Planners and Designers CS0005 course in the master’s program in Creative Sustainability at Aalto University.  I had previously blogged about teaching and learning from the Systemic Thinking for Sustainable Communities CS0004 course in October.  The February course was again intensive, this time on a Friday-Tuesday-Friday schedule.

All of the course content is available as open source in a directory at http://coevolving.com/aalto/201102-cs0005/ .  Here’s a map outlining the course.

The style of the classes again centered on a list of references from which students could select according to personal interests, supplemented by lectures outlined with context maps.  The course outline was provided as long form text that evolved online during the week.  Written responses from students were most frequently posted on public blogs, with notifications and responses on the Systemicists Forum on the Systems Community of Inquiry, with separate threads for Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and the final essays.

The first lecture for CS0005 was a quick review of the first topic for CS0004 in October, foundations for a systems approach.  This turned out to be a worthwhile activity, as the students (and my co-instructors!) had mulled over the basic ideas of systems for four months, resulting in more reflection and questions than I was expecting.

This background in the first lecture continued with a discussion of method frameworks.  Read more... (932 words, 9 images, estimated 3:44 mins reading time)

Since 2008, I’ve been conducting research on service systems and the systems sciences, with my core collaborators Gary Metcalf, Jennifer Wilby and Kyoichi (Jim) Kijima.  As senior members of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, we’ve been working towards a more formal association with the International Council on Systems Engineering, and with the Systems Science Working Group in particular.  Our organizations came together for the first time in the INCOSE International Symposium 2010, in Chicago.

For the International Symposium, our contribution was a panel on our progress in researching service systems and the systems sciences, with position papers and presentation slides discussed in Chicago in July.  After that meeting, a summary of the session was reported in an article published in INCOSE Insight in October.

The publications page on this web site includes links to the:

• July 2010 abstract, outline and presentation slides; and the
• October 2010 article in INCOSE Insight.

Our core group will be continuing our research into 2011, with a two-day co-learning workshop at the International Workshop 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona.  The linkages between the systems sciences and systems engineering should continue to develop.

Earlier this year, in April, the International Federation for Systems Research hosted its biannual research conversation, this time in Pernegg, Austria.  This meeting was a four-day opportunity to continue developing ideas on the emerging science of service systems begun in July 2009.

The proceedings from the meeting have now been published.  I’ve extracted the chapter for our team as a separate downloadable document.  The report starts with a description of our activities, and an outline of our progress.

The conversation began with self-reflections on personal experiences leading each of the individuals to the systems sciences, acknowledging the influence of those trajectories on their perspectives on service systems.  In recognition of this science of service systems as a potentially a new paradigm, much of the time together was spent in sensemaking about the intersection between ongoing services research and systems sciences perspectives.  This sensemaking led the team to focus the dialogue more on posing the right questions to clarify thinking broadly, as opposed to diving deeply towards solutions that would be tied up as issues within a problematique.  Read more... (816 words, estimated 3:16 mins reading time)