Coevolving Innovations

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... (767 words, 1 image, estimated 3:04 mins reading time)

One of the benefits of the IBM’s Smarter Planet vision(s) is its encouragement to think about the 21st century world from a fresh perspective.  The rise of the service economy — which is not the same as the service sector — calls for the nurturing of talents with different emphases.  While curricula typically have a strong grasp of agricultural systems (developed since, say, 1600 A,.D.), and industrial systems (since, say, 1850 A.D.), the science of service systems is still emerging.

A study on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education by a 2007 National Academies committee published recommendations in 2008 for professional science master’s education that is interdisciplinary in character.  Such an investment in curriculum change has been proposed as a good use of stimulus funding in the U.S. In concert, 8 of 10 students expressed a wish for universities to revamp their traditional learning environments in the Smarter Planet University Jam conducted in spring 2009 .

In 2008 and 2009, the focus has shifted to primary and secondary school education, convening another National Academies committee centered on K-12, with a report due in 2010.  Jim Spohrer — formerly the Director of Almaden Services Research, and now the Director of IBM Global University Programs — updated me on his current thinking about a potential design for education on Smarter Planet Service Systems.

Jim is following confirmation of the effectiveness of a Challenge-Based Learning approach by the New Media Consortium as “a strategy to engage kids in any class by giving them the opportunity to work on significant problems that have real-world implications”.  I liked his ordering of systems into three levels:  Read more... (1768 words, 1 image, estimated 7:04 mins reading time)

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)

I was listening to Sam Palmisano’s talk on “A Smarter Planet” as part of the Technology and Foreign Policy discussion at the Council for Foreign Relations — the audio version, because I prefer to not sit at my computer to watch the video. He said that as the world gets “flatter”, smaller and more interconnected, the planet is becoming smarter. Smarter means that …

… digital and physical infrastructures of the world are converging.

Three advances in technology are driving this change.

• The world is becoming instrumented: transistor technology is embedded in the mobile phones of 4 billion mobile subscribers today, and there will be 30 million RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags within 2 years.
• The world is becoming interconnected: the Internet not only means 2 billion people connected person-to-person, but also the ability for instruments / devices to connect machine-to-machine.
• Things are becoming more intelligent: since instrumented devices generate data that can be stored and analyzed, advanced analytics enables intelligence that can be translated into action — with nearly-continual real-time updates streaming from supercomputers.

The talk continued with a discussion about how much waste — in energy, gridlocked traffic, supply chain inefficiencies, unsystemic healthcare, and water usage — in the physical world might be reduced through acting smarter. In the pure information world, financial institutions were able to spread risk, but not track risk, which undermined confidence in the markets.

I follow the ideas coming from IBM more closely than most people. I’ve also had the benefit of studying businesses for three decades(!) in various academic contexts. This has led me to reflect on the conjoined ideas on technology and business that have coevolved with me over the past decade. Some significant themes have included:

• 1. e-business (1997) and sense-and-respond organizations
• 2. On demand business (2003 – 2004) and inter-organizational governance
• 3. Innovation that matters and complex systems (2006) and the science of service systems
• 4. Converging digital and physical infrastructures (2008) and systems modeling language

Formal, historical records of IBM’s directions are clearly documented in annual reports. I’m not an IBM executive, so my academic research is unlikely to impact corporate reports. However, it’s undeniable that my continuing on-the-ground engagements with clients and ongoing conversations with key thinkers inside IBM have shaped the way I see the world. From an academic perspective, I’ve moved closer to Normann (2001) in the view that economic progress is related to technological progress.

The effect of technology is — and always has been — to loosen constraints. As a result of technological development, what was not possible becomes possible. Or what was not economically feasible becomes so. [p. 27]

Each of the four themes are described below. Three themes are historical perspectives. The fourth continues to emerge with my current ongoing research.  Read more... (3297 words, 1 image, estimated 13:11 mins reading time)