Why Service Systems?
With the nature of the economic system changing rapidly, boundaries are increasingly shifting with greater interconnectivity and interactions. This results in the emergence of a complex system of connected entities of physical goods, people, communities and organisations for greater individualised fulfilment of needs.
These interconnected entities are evolving into value-creating service systems, where entities render their competency i.e. service, within the system to co-create value and achieve outcomes for the entities themselves as well as for collaborative systemic outcomes. These systems encompass a wide range of constellations, from businesses to local communities, with a changing role of markets and creating new business and revenue models.
The knowledge to manage, deliver, configure, design, grow or understand such service systems crosses functional and disciplinary boundaries to the extent that it challenges old assumptions and legacy knowledge. The new knowledge is social, material, technical and economic all at once and more fundamentally, disrupts the logic from reductionistic science towards systems science. The rate of change is increasing, stretching traditional thinking in many fundamental ways. The risks of businesses and policy makers not understanding these emerging systems are profound, as we believe service systems knowledge is the transdisciplinary domain area that sits at the heart of the future.
