Abstract
Service systems engineering (SSE) focuses on the systematic design and development of service systems. Guided by a value proposition, service systems enable value co-creation through a configuration of actors and resources (often including a service architecture, technology, information, and physical artifacts), therefore constituting complex socio-technical systems. IS research can play a leading role in understanding and developing service systems. SSE calls for research leading to actionable design theories, methods and approaches for systematically designing, developing and piloting service systems, based upon understanding the underlying principles of service systems. Three major challenges have been identified: engineering service architectures, engineering service systems interactions, and engineering resource mobilization, i.e. extending the access to and use of resources by means of IT. Researching SSE is challenging. Assessing the models, methods, or artifacts of SSE often requires embedded research within existing or even novel service systems. Consequently, approaches such as piloting IT-based innovations, design research or action research are the most promising for SSE research. As an integrative discipline, IS is in a unique position to spearhead the efforts in advancing the architecture, interaction, and resource base of service systems with evidence-based design.
Highlights
Better IS-based design knowledge could advance the architecture, the interactions, and the resource base of service systems, helping value creation to become better adapted to the context of need and opportunities for collaboration between customers and service providers
We posit that service systems engineering should focus on the research challenges of service systems that enable novel value propositions, i.e. service architecture, enhancing interactions within processes of co-creation, and mobilizing resources (Fig. 1)
Service systems engineering should be able to draw on reliable design knowledge on informationintensive service systems interactions
Summary
Service systems are complex socio-technical systems that enable value co-creation. Service systems engineering (SSE) calls for research on evidence-based design knowledge for such systems that permeate our society. Better IS-based design knowledge could advance the architecture, the interactions, and the resource base of service systems, helping value creation to become better adapted to the context of need and opportunities for collaboration between customers and service providers. Its inherited product-centric thinking does not reflect service-centric business models and strategy (Ostrom et al 2010) nor does extant service engineering research take full advantage of the opportunities for systemic, interactive, and collaborative service innovation based on advances in IT (Spohrer and Kwan 2009). A number of service researchers have promoted the vision of establishing a service science as a new academic discipline (Chesbrough and Spohrer 2006) While such a discipline has not emerged, these developments emphasize the systemic and trans-disciplinary nature of servicerelated research challenges and prompted a markedly higher research activity in many disciplines, including IS (e.g., Fielt et al 2013). The IS discipline is in a unique position to spearhead the efforts in advancing the architecture, interaction, and resource base of these service systems with evidence-based design knowledge
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