Here's how it starts:
As Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME) has been developing, I’ve noticed a refinement of language. Rather than just abbreviating the long clause to service science, I’m now careful to use the phrase of a science of service systems, following Spohrer, Maglio et. al (2007). There’s a clear definition of service system in the final April 2008 revision of the report by the University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing.My two cents:
I still have to print out, highlight and mull the many points you’ve put on the table. Perhaps the following will be useful in disentangling what’s happening.
Suppose the bins were energy, time and space. It eliminates the notion that information creates stuff. Actually making stuff starts with stuff that moves through a process. Information makes the process require less time and energy. But without the input of stuff, we still don’t get to more stuff.
In this schema, re energy, we get people power. Tool assisted people power. Then biomass based power. The next stage would be solar or renewable power sources. Input stuff might be framed as time/energy that has been fixed in space. The system structure can then be framed as the emergent structure of time/energy in time/space.
Three variables make for much simpler models.
Thanks for resurfacing this essay on the science of service systems. I've been working with a team of system scientists internationally (UK, Canada, U.S., NZ, Japan) to work out some of the deeper questions over the next year.
ReplyDeleteThe blog post was much of the background for a paper on Business Models and Evolving Economic Paradigms: A Systems Science Approach. There, I had one way of filling out the table that I had left blank. Since we're early in developing a science of service systems, I've been saying that my way of filling in the cells is only one interpretation of the world, and there may be other equally valid ways.
Thanks for visiting. Your post was one of the most detailed researched notions I've found on line. I look forward to following the link to the paper.
ReplyDeleteI wondered if you or your collaborators have considered systems theory plus game theory to clarify the process.
It seems to me that it might supply the mechanisms that give the framework for emerging systems at the level of people. I see "people" as the appropriate unit of analysis to understand emergence. As the neuron is the appropriate unit of analysis to understand emergent neural networks. And information exchange is the appropriate unit of analysis for system dynamics.
I would think that game theory, especially in the idea of ESS strategies could be a useful analytic tool.
Thanks for your article. Its really interesting and I hope that you will post more. Thank you for sharing.
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