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Wow. I happened across a white paper produced by IBM & Cambridge University, with the title ‘Succeeding Though Service Innovation‘. It’s a first stab at trying to draw some shape onto what is essentially a fragmented, cross-disciplinary domain, and I have to say, it’s pretty bloody good.

We’ve (at LBi) been talking about service design for a couple of years now, but in that time, I can honestly say that noone has come close to defining exactly what it means, how to do it effectively, or how we hire good people to do it with us. Instead, we see components of ’service thinking’ crop up within discrete projects, aligned to the ascendent position that digital thinking tends to have nowadays. And that can be quite frustrating - especially if you take a more holistic view to solving design challenges.

This paper throws a couple more challenges (and while I can relate to this in the context of working for an uber-agency, it’s just as relevant for small businesses, manufacturers, government, etc):

• one of the things that I feel, now I’m all grown up and working in the industry, is the overwhelming sense of ‘misfit’ within most of the organisations I come into contact with. I’ve a diverse background that spans the arts and science, and I have also been busy developing specialisms within the area I’ve been working within for the last 10 years. But what this means is that I could apply for a number of different roles within different departments in my company - and actually, would be pretty well stimulated by be able to do this. But that breaks the model. So…I’m T-shaped when most companies either want you to be I-shaped, or go into management. This paper points at the need for organisations to mature, and support broader, polymathic skillsets, and indeed, allow them to increase the value they can give back to the business
• Service science / design / thinking requires a truly robust and eclectic model for partnering, if you’re serious about delivering anything. Most businesses tend to operate within sectors or value chains, and this means we need to break out of our silos and start engaging with partners in places we wouldn’t ordinarily look.
• More soon!

But really, the bit I love most about all this stuff is the potential for designing around problems that are rooted in issues caused by our failing environment. It’s gonna take some brave and ambitious souls to start solving some of these problems, for sure. Anyone want to start a business?