SRA service engineering/design

[martijn...@gmail.com]

ijdrage aan IIP-SaaS Strategische Research Agenda
Op basis van IIP-SaaS Adviesraad bijeenkomst 10 september 2008
Onderdeel: Service Engineering
Hans Akkermans, 29-09-2008

Preliminaries nav input IIP-SaaS adviesraad:
Voorstel herbenoeming van service engineering: Service Innovation
Het gaat in dit onderdeel om de samenhang tussen business en ICT-
aspecten (dus interdisciplinair, niet monodisciplinair puur
bedrijfskundig dan wel puur software)
Kern van strategische research agenda moet compact en simpel zijn,
o.a. appellerend aan beleidsmakers buiten het IIP-terrein en buiten
ICT.


Service Innovation

The Netherlands has a long-standing reputation as an open, externally
oriented economy that acts as a node in a network of international
distributive and trading relationships with many other countries
around the globe.

In today’s globalizing economy, services become increasingly prominent
and, at the same time, ICT has become a key enabler in the creation
and innovation of services. The Netherlands currently has a reasonably
good position in several specific service sectors, and it is also
sometimes able to successfully export innovative service concepts
(e.g. Ideal). However, this is not yet the case across the board, and
the vast potential and opportunities offered by modern ICT are not
fully exploited for services and their innovation right now. In this
area The Netherlands falls short of its above-mentioned general
reputation. However, this can be changed..

If the ambition of The Netherlands is (and we believe it should be) to
demand a strong position across the board as an important network node
in the emerging globalized and ICT-enabled service economy, we have to
step up activities. To achieve this position for the Netherlands is
the leading idea behind the IIP-SaaS strategic research agenda.

Accordingly, the strategic research agenda for Service Innovation
comprises the following key elements:

A. The set-up of an NL industry-university community platform that
serves to share and distribute knowledge regarding service innovation
experiences and strategies across different sectors.

B. The development of a shared, generic framework for the modeling,
analysis and construction of ICT-enabled innovative services.
This framework is to rest on a strong conceptual basis but such that
key parts of it are implemented in software as analytical tools
supporting the development of service innovation trajectories. Key
characteristics of and requirements for this framework are:
It describes and models services in an inherently componentized and
flexibly configurable way.
It takes business requirements and considerations regarding service
innovation as its trigger and starting point, i.e. it considers
service innovation from the value creation standpoint.
From there, the framework supports integrated analysis of the
projected economic as well as ICT technological feasibility of
proposed service innovation trajectories.
Finally, the analysis made possible by the framework factors in known
customer and social factors relating to patterns in adoption and
diffusion of service innovations.

C. Test and validation of this framework by its application to several
new service innovation trajectories in specific Dutch industry and
public sectors. (In particular: e.g. finance, e-health care and e-
government).

D. The set-up of a fast-feedback management mechanism between service
innovation research projects and industry/customer usage that
decreases the lead times for knowledge sharing as well as for time to
market.

One can view the strategic agenda components A+D as the Netherlands
analogy of what in EU research strategy terms is called a Technology
Platform for Service Innovation. The components B+C then cover the
overarching strategic goals of the IIP-SaaS research project proper;
they also should lead to direct opportunities for the take-up of
results by participating or spin-off companies.