What is Service Science?

ABSTRACT

From the perspective of both the amount of value added and the number of employees, the service sector is becoming increasingly important throughout the developed world. However, compared with the manufacturing industry, productivity in the service sector is low, and there are strong calls for its improvement. Additionally, the future effects of investment in services and the level of future predictability are also low for the service sector. As a result, both service providers and clients are highly dissatisfied with the current evaluation and distribution of value that they feel should be attainable through investment in services.

In response to this, a new concept has emerged, centered on IBM's "service science" (now abbreviated as SSME, for services sciences, management, and engineering). The goal of service science is to increase the productivity of the service industry, promote innovation, and create greater validity and transparency when assessing the value of investments in services.

Generally speaking, the service sector is based heavily on the intuition and experience of employees. Service science seeks to take these elements and examine them scientifically, investigating them through the use of existing academic disciplines in order to raise productivity and create visible assessments of investments. An example of such efforts would be improved future predictability of the effects and risks of service investments through the mathematical modeling of business processes, which in turn would lead to improved productivity.

This report examines the present conditions of service science in the U.S. and Japan. Currently, the concept of service science is not yet widely known, but the recognition of its importance is growing in developed nations across the globe, and there is a strong possibility that it will become a strong movement in the future. In Japan as well, the promotion and research of service science has finally begun to take root. In the years to come, it is crucial that Japanese companies and universities cooperate openly and construct a service science field that is appropriate to Japan's service sector.