Coevolving Innovations

I attended the Memorial Service for Russell Ackoff at the University of Pennsylvania in February.  Since I was already in Philadelphia, I was invited to hang out for an extra day to present at the Organizational Dynamics Lecture Series, as part of the master’s program in the School of Arts and Sciences.  I gave a talk on “The Emerging Science of Service Systems”, based on the research that I’ve been doing since I first saw Jim Spohrer speak at the ISSS 2005 meeting in Cancun.

I had previously posted the slides for the talk on the Coevolving Innovation Commons Publications archive.  An outline for the talk is as follows:

• A. Introduction
• B. The “new service economy” and SSMED
• C. The systems in service systems
• D. Artifacts / feeds to follow

The presentation is now available as a web video on the University of Pennsylvania media site for the School of Arts and Sciences.

I’m one, but not the only, researcher looking into Service Science, Engineering, Management and Design from the foundations of a systems approach.  A group from the ISSS has been having conversations on the emerging science. Following the question-and-answer period after the formal talk, some students stayed on to ask questions about systems in more depth.  The University of Pennsylvania, with a long tradition of systems thinking, continues to attract students with that interest!

The Organizational Dynamics program is now the home of the Russell Lincoln Ackoff Systems Thinking Library.  Coincidentally, the ISSS Cancun 2005 meeting with Russ Ackoff as the keynote speaker was the last formal presentation that I saw of him.  I never had the opportunity to discuss service systems with Russ, and hope that he might have appreciated the direction that I’m taking with the services sciences agenda.

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:

In engagements with clients/customers, my work often includes system envisioning: facilitating the description of a collective desirable future (on a horizon of maybe 1 to 3 years out).  Once a group has converged on a future state or vision, moving forward is merely a matter of will.  Defining that future state, however, is more art than science.  In addition, with many more businesses operating as service systems, getting a handle on the invisible work that will be performed can be a challenge.  Work practices will coevolve with new technologies in ways unfamiliar to experiences to date.

In discussions with my colleagues, differences between their engagement approach and mine became clearer.  I understand and appreciate the process-based methods (e.g. process consultation by Ed Schein) used by large consulting teams, but my typical engagement is now timeboxed to a few weeks elapsed time, with just a few interviewers.  Some executive sponsors may ask for an interview guide in advance of coming onsite, but I don’t use a formally-structured guide.  The context for 60-to-90 minute interviews are light — we want people to talk about time-intensive activities and annoyances in their jobs — and generally find that interviewees would be happy if small adjustment could be made so that each would have to do less work.

Reflecting on these methods, I’ve seen a pattern of three stages in this approach:

• (1) Induction: Rather than coming in with a preconceived model of how work gets done in a particular business, let those closest to the activities speak freely.  From the data collected, converge on common patterns in issues and/or problems that can be reviewed, validated and prioritized for resolution.

When the Master’s program on International Service Business Management started up at Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in 2006 — then it was Helsinki Polytechnic Stadia — I was one of the original authors for the curriculum.  I happened to be in Finland in September 2006 and 2007, so I gave some of the early lectures.

My schedule in 2008 didn’t line up, but I did happen to be back in Finland in September 2009.  Thus, I gave an updated version of the lecture in one of the first classes for the session.  The content included:

• A. Introduction
• B. The changing world, and SSMED
• C. Service-dominant logic
• D. Service as a paradigm
• E. A smarter planet
• F. Artifacts / feeds to follow

The lecture ran just under 2 hours.  I’ve posted the slides on the Coevolving Innovation Commons, under Publications.

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.

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.