Services Sciences, Management and Engineering

Cover Story: Are We Ready for "SERVICE"?

ThinkTank October 10^th, 2005

Translated from Consultation magazine - ThinkTank Media group

Let "service" be differentiator!
No matter how you understand it, you cannot avoid the concept of "service".

However, "service" is a wide concept and includes everything from hotels and restaurants to doctors and lawyers. What does "service" mean here? What new profits can "service" bring to enterprises? Do enterprises converting to "service" need new business mode? What capabilities are required for people working in service industry?

Some people believe 2005 is a watershed. Before 2005, many people made money from marketing, after 2005, more people will make money in service filed.

This has been proved by facts. According to statistics data, income from service industry accounts 70% of GDP in the developed countries and service industry takes over 75% of economy in USA. This percentage is increasing rapidly. There is an issues of opportunity and capability, seeing from the economic development trend, service industry surely will bring new opportunity to many people, for example, · and business consulting filed implies special opportunities. Many companies are grasping business opportunities through more efficient IT system, streamlining business process and Internet. But they lack talents with comprehensive knowledge in business, management and information technologies, which is necessary for providing efficient service. Few peoples concern about fostering talents for new service economy, or even failed to realize the emergence of Service Economy Era.

It is pleasing that some people have pay attention to this phenomenon. Not long ago, IBM, the largest information technologies and business solution provider in the world, sponsored and convened "Service Innovation and Service Science Disciplines Construction" Symposium at Beijing University. IBM raised the concept of "Service Science" first in the world and started study and exploration on this.

China held discussion on this subject for the first time following United States of America, United Kingdom and Japan. At this symposium, key note speakers unveiled vision of "Service Science" in all-round way from government planning, rising of global Service Economy, Service Science Discipline Construction needs thus arisen, refining and promoting Service Economy through Service Science Discipline Construction and industrial prospects etc

At the invitation of IBM, Think Tank magazine house attended this symposium on "Service Science". This is another Discipline Construction that Think Tank, as the "Management Textbook", participating following "Building Management Science with Chinese Characteristics". We still play the role of platform unique to media. On the one hand, we will organize relevant experts and consulting advisors to study topics about "Service Science"; on the other hand, we will go into enterprises to collect and refine the management, practices and case of Service Innovation for references of readers. Let's embrace the advent of "Service Economy" with innovative attitude.

[Leaderette] What Does Service Science Bring to Us?
The series reports on "conversion from 'product-orientation' to 'customer-orientation' were published on two previous issues of "Consulting", which explore the ways to launch "Customer Value" from strategy, process, human resources and IT technologies. We attended the "Service Innovation and Service Science Disciplines Construction" symposium at the invitation of IBM recently and found out with surprises that the concept of "Service Science" proposed by IBM is similar to the "Customer Value" we are studying in connotation although they extent approach the issues from different points. The exception lies in that "Service Science" is a larger expression and the summary of the concept is more valuable. In this issue, we organized topics related about "Service Science" and expect more people from business, academic circles and government will take part in the discussion.

"Service" is a wide concept and it does bring new profit margin to enterprises. The enterprises converting to "service" also created new business mode. At the same time, t enables the people working in service industry with new capabilities.

If we may say so that computer science separated from electronic engineering and mathematics and became an separate discipline with the advent of information technologies era 50 years ago, then with the arrival of Service Economy, can Service Science become an independent discipline in near future as the computer science did? What is Service Science? What challenges and opportunities will Service Economy bring to Discipline Construction, cultivation of talents and academic research?

[Summary] What is Service?
"Service" is a wide concept and it does bring new profit margin to enterprises. The enterprises converting to "service" also created new business mode. At the same time, t enables the people working in service industry with new capabilities. According to statistics data, income from service industry accounts 70% of GDP in the developed countries and service industry takes over 75% of economy in USA. This percentage is increasing rapidly.

To welcome the advent of Service Economy Era, IBM, the largest information technologies and business solution provider in the world, sponsored and convened "Service Innovation and Service Science Disciplines Construction" Symposium at Beijing University not long ago. IBM first proposed the concept of "Service Science" in the world and started study and exploration on this.

The reporter learnt that China held discussion on this subject for the first time following United States of America, United Kingdom and Japan. During two days of symposium, the leaders and industrial authorities from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Information Industry, Beijing University, Tsinghua University, University of California Berkeley and Rensselaer Institute of Technology gathered with leaders of three research laboratories, global services and university cooperation of IBM as well as industry and media, explore the status quo, development and application prospect of "Service Science" under the background of advent of "Service Economy", try to depict the vision to refine, enhance and promote the Service Economy and industry future of China through establishing "Service Science" discipline.

If we may say so that computer science separated from electronic engineering and mathematics and became a separate discipline with the advent of information technologies era 50 years ago, then with the arrival of Service Economy, can Service Science become an independent discipline in near future as the computer science did? What is Service Science? What challenges and opportunities will Service Economy bring to Discipline Construction, cultivation of talents and academic research?

These are the issues that cannot be avoided in the Discipline Construction of Service Innovation and Service Science.

IBM refers "Service Science" to "SSME", which represents four key words, namely, Services Sciences, Management and Engineering.

Why does IBM define the definition of "Service Science --SSME" as this?

Obviously, the purpose that IBM proposes to build a new service discipline is to create a service field to develop and carry out technical application so that help business, government and other organizations to improve current service and enter into new promising field. This field requires understanding how to create and deliver reusable assets so as to re-execute service more easily and deliver service more efficiently. This is the foundation of Service Science. This new discipline will combine the efforts in the computer science, operational research, industry engineering, business strategy, management science, social and cognitive science and legal science to foster the skills required by service-dominated economy.

IBM and many university partners have made great efforts in recent years and considerable progress was made in driving Service Science. Now service discipline is coming to classroom. The leading ones include University of California Berkeley, Stanford University, Northwestern University, Arizona State University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rensselaer Institute of Technology and Georgia Institute of Technology. Recently, representatives of IBM and Oxford University and University of Warwick, two top business colleges of UK, met and discussed necessity of Service Science.

For IBM, Service Science differs from the concept that existing service industry refers to but it emerges in form of combining information technologies. Service industry covers everything from the day of birth. Except manufacturing industry and agriculture, all remaining belong to service industry. The common nature of the products of the service industry is that its main products are not tangible articles but rather service. The nature of wide coverage of service industry also makes the opportunities of increasing service industry become vague. Companies not only provide more service rather than products but also manage them as a series of internal service. In many occasions, they will decide which services is their speciality and which services can be provided by external experts.

The coming of "Service Science" - the development of management manner of new service mode, process, strategy and labor itself can be deemed as a series of services.

To define the research scope of "Service Science", IBM convened over 100 well-known professors from business and engineering institutes as early as in May 2004 to review changing business environment and explore the development status of "Service Science" together with scientists and consultants of IBM.

Experts noted constant-changing business environment and they believe it contains following elements:

The CEOs worldwide began to concern income growth of company again rather than increasing profit through cut cost. They are realizing gradually the importance of flexibility and response of company. They are trying to take immediate actions to solve critical problems regarding human. The main challenges in their agenda include: priority task, new key capabilities, challenging the reaction of internal organization. (Source: 2004Global CEO Survey of IBM BCS)

The period from invention and innovation to selective business practices and to expanding application scope is reduced greatly. It is under this background that Information Service Economy emerges.

Global competition: multiple combinations of business, politics and academics; multi point interception of all industries worldwide from biotechnology to transportation, energy, telecommunication, information technologies and. public services.

Change of balance point between company and customers: shortening period from invention and innovation to becoming the commodity forces companies to seek new approaches so as to provide commodities and services that differentiate from that of competitors and create new value for customers to attract customers.

Information technologies drive to produce faster processors, larger memory capacity and bandwidth so that the quantity of equipment integrated and accessed into network grows in geometric rate.

Experts predicate that under this background the "Service Science" is a new method that drives joint innovation by business and technical experts. They list the reasons for this predication:

The Service Science can combine the efforts in the established fields of computer science, operational research, industry engineering, mathematics, management science, decision science, social science and legal science; create new skills and market to provide high-value Business Presentation Transformation Service (BPTS).

With the advent of standardization epoch, popularity of Internet and increase of reliability, inter-and intra business transactions become easier. Technologies can realize new internal and external service of company.

However, technology itself is not enough to help company create new business designs, services and products to make their services different and acquire environment for development and dealing with changes. Only the close combination of technologies and services can realize this wish of company. But the precondition is they should be combined perfectly. Under many conditions new technologies will promote new business design and, in return, new business design will cause new technical innovation.

The method of business and technology combination requires high professional technologies. Obviously, it is impossible there is a researcher with doctor degree for every opportunity. Promotion closer integration of technologies and business requires new skills and combination of skills and new method of using these skills in the balanced way. These skills and application methods should be taught from university. Service Science can provide skills, train staffs and design balance model and model.

So that experts considers the status quo of "service discipline" and contents included in following fields, which are:

Business strategy
Business process
Human resource / labors
Basic technologies

The central idea is that people unanimously agreed to set up a new discipline to drive next round of innovation. This discipline will absorb and employ the existing research efforts of each Business College, engineering institutes and computer science colleges. Although this discipline is named "Service Science" at this summit, this discipline in fact will attempt to apply the business operation and planning to scientific field and, in return, scientists will take part in business world. This discipline will apply mass of scientific researches into service (differs from manufacturing), therefore it is called "Business Service Science" or "Business Transformation Science" more exactly because it requires not only developers, technical and strategic element but also development of existing and future business process.

Four Categories of Service Industry:

Classifying based on main functions and objects, roles of the modern service technologies and with reference to the international industry classification standard, we classify the service industry into four categories:
Basic service: including communication service and information service.
Production and market service: including finance, logistics, wholesale, e-business, agriculture support service as well as professional service including brokerage and consulting service.
Individual consumption service: including education, medicine and health, boarding, ·food and beverage, culture and entertainment, travel, real estate, retails.
Public service: including public management service, basic education, and public health, Medicare and general information service of government.

[Exchange] Service: Innovation Required
Some people treat 2005 as a watershed and predicate that more people will make money in service sectors. But easier said than done, experts believed that the only way is innovation at "Service Innovation and Service Science Disciplines Construction" symposium.

Yang Fuqing
She is academician of China Science Academy, professor and doctor tutor. She is director of Information and Engineering Science Department of Beijing University, director-general and honorary president of Software and Microelectronic Institute of Beijing University, director of Software Engineering National Engineering Research Center. Her main research directions are: system software, Software Engineering basic theory, Software Engineering Environment, software industrialization production technologies.

Discuss the idea about construction of Service Innovation and Service Science Discipline. It is important to discuss relation between the modern service industry development and Service Innovation talents cultivation. The report of 15th central committee of CPC in September 1997 raised the concept of modern service industry clearly. Modern service industry generates at well-developed stage of industrialization and develops based on information technologies and modern management concept and is the service industry with intensive information and knowledge. In 21st century, modern service industry with the software as the core is becoming the new trend that drives growth of Chinese economy, developing modern service industry has become our national strategy. Computer is a kind of tool and is widely used. Software itself is a service. Therefore, computer itself means that modern service industry has found excellent tools and support since there is software. Modern service industry calls for scale of talents and innovation of modern service industry requires innovative talent for the realization and development. Just as the growth of cause needs innovative talents,the growth of innovative talents requires innovation mode and environment. Fostering of talents for Service Science and Service Innovation has become the bottleneck that restricts the development of modern service industry. "Service Innovation and Service Science Discipline Construction" has become the common mission of all universities, especially software and microelectronics institutes and management colleges.

James Yeh
He is now director of IBM China Research Laboratory and focuses on researches regarding enterprise transformation optimization, information technologies basic facilities, and language research consulting and information service. Doctor Ye concentrated on study on application of superconductor at early days and then focused on the development and production management of semiconductor, magnetism memory and assembly production process.

China is the largest production country in the world. I believe that we paid high cost: high energy consumption, serious pollution. We will continue to work in the production field. At the same time, we should think about how we move to service industry with low energy consumption and low pollution.

The "service discipline" we said today is a science. It has management, engineering and rules.

Service is a kind of "relation". There is close relation between service provider and service recipients. For example, when dining in restaurant, ordering is what the customer should do himself. But did the waiter hand you menu politely? This is what the waiter does. This process creates mutual relation. There is a way of executing agreement between the provider and customer. It is not written on paper but is a kind of expectation possibly. Like going to hospitable, the service you hope to receive is there is a good doctor to help you answer medical questions. As in restaurant, you hope to enjoy a delicious meal. This is relation of mutual trust. The mutual-beneficial value will be generated on mutual relation. I have good meal and enjoy the food, while the food provider can get profit from it. This is an important step.

First, service is a "system".

Consulting is also a service industry. As doctors do, the consultant helps you decide it you need to lose some weight, how can you run faster. Some businesses are not performing well. It is necessary to find out the problem and help them take actions. The process from the consultancy at beginning to the execution and maintenance later is a systematic project itself. Optimization is required as long as there is system. It includes operational research, game theory, and system engineer theory.

Second, the object of service is "human".

Service will involve people. A single system is not sufficient for service. There are many human factors involved. The human factors include customer behaviouristics and psychology, service environment, customer experience and self-service etc. we should study all these.

How can we support service? Organization behaviouristics, performance incentive and efficiency of service, service environment, service psychology and human interaction etc are very important step. Therefore service is a living thing externally except it is a system internally.

Finally, is service a science, art or engineering? It is all of them in fact. Service discipline is a learning that studies how to manage the organization process and resources to reach the efficiency and effect of service by using scientific method and principles. It requires innovation of technologies, innovation of industry, and innovation of society and organization. There are many things to do as for how can there be more innovations in demand so that to create bigger Service Economy.

Gao Xinmin
He is the managing vice president of China Information Association now. He was vice director and chief engineer of Technology Department of State Energy Commission and Technology Department of State Economy Commission, Director of State Information Center. Presently, he assumes leadership in the programs of "Study on Technical Issues for Modern Service Industry Development" in national long- and mediate-term technology planning.

Service industry is not new. There is service industry ever since. Economic activities that are not produced operated with tangible products are service business. However, only the service business that forms the transaction consists service industry. Why is the statistics rate of domestic service industry low? The reason is that they are not filtered out; it is cycling as internal activities rather than the contents of service activities. The dining hall belongs to unit and the logistics of factory belongs to factory. They are not independent. This is in fact the mark of low industrialization. They will become service industry once they are separated and become professional.

What is the concept of modern service industry? Modern service industry is the character of China. There is no Modern Service Industry internationally. It is either called service industry or knowledge-intensive service industry, or strategic service industry. China first used the work "modern service industry" in the report of 15th Central Committee of CPC in September 1997 but no definition is given. In our study, we define the modern service industry as the knowledge and technology intensive service industry that is generated at well-developed stage of industrialization and develops based on information technologies and modern management concept. This kind of service industry is the Modern Service Industry.

Globally, service industry has four features: first. It is based on network and information technologies. Second, the knowledge and technology intensity is increasing. Finance is a good example. In 1990s, the percentage of investment technologies and capital and investment in capital equipment in finance industry is higher than investment in transportation and other manufacturing industry. There is statistics in the developed countries. The finance industry in experienced large pace of modernization in 1990s. The investment is mainly IT. Third, the market of service and subject provides service show the trend of globalization. In global economy situation, the previous change of is the global migration of manufacturing industry. Our processing trade mainly benefited from this global migration of manufacturing industry. The present change started from 1990s and formed global migration of service industry. The opportunity of service industry migration lies in the progress of service industry. We should study this issue under this background. Fourth, with the development of economy, especially in manufacturing industry and for some other tangible products industries, the increase of productivity in these industries will result in decrease of employment inevitably. Therefore, whole world is finding solution to the structure employment transfer from service industry without any exception. Modern service industry can provide posts of all levels.

Modern service industry evolves with the progress of industrialization. We can speed up or accelerate this process. But this process cannot be skipped. We should consider the national situation of China while studying industrialization and character of service industry.

The concept of modern service industry is proposed by China. It is called knowledge based intensive service industry. The concept of knowledge-intensive service industry mainly covers five parts, which are: communication service industry, finance service industry, enterprise service industry, education service industry, medicine and health service industry. The enterprise service industry is various mediating and consulting service for enterprise and can be called profession service. In later 1990s and early 21st century, knowledge-intensive service industry added a new member: it is digital content industry or digital media industry. Many countries added this now because there was no such trend then.

The significance of modern service industry development is to increasing the added value of whole industry and enhancing overall quality of national economy. For example, a shirt or T-shirt is sold at US$100, $70 comes from service, $10 from raw material, $5 from tax and duty and textile quota, $4.5 from purchase and transportation. We can see its value here. We now have large trade surplus, especially for U.S.A, but actually we only make money from the small part of it, 75% of money is not made by us, it is made by Wal-mart or someone else.

National technology innovation system must be tooted into modern service industry. We face the problem of low percentage and irrational structure. Many of our information industries, including IT service industry and modern logistics, are in very primitive stage. We analyzed the factors that restrict our whole service industry, especially modern service industry; there are limiting factors in provision and limiting ones in demands. So that it cause slow development of service industry now. The modern service industry is in the initial stage.

Jim Spohrer:
The Service Research Team led by Dr. Jim Spohrer mainly studies the service innovation related issues together with IBM global service team. It focuses on the research in human science, on demand innovation service and other fields. Dr. Jim Spohrer is one of main advocators promoting Service Science in U.S.A.

We always can find out some new growth opportunity in service industry. Globally, Service Innovation systematic process is the effort by government, industry and academic circle. Cooperation of three parties is necessary for the realization. Government should deal with the Service Innovation as an important task because it has close relation with growth of GDP. Insiders say that reform is necessary because it involves the realization of growth of enterprise. Cross-discipline exchange and cooperation is required from Service Innovation.

Service Innovation is cross-discipline actually. Service Innovation is a kind of technical innovation and combination of business mode innovation, social organization innovation with demand and customer innovation. I find out during the study that most significant part of Service Innovation comes from the thorough understanding of customers. This understanding is much deeper than product innovation.

For example, if you go to amazon.com to buy books, amazon.com will recommend many directories. Once I want buy a book but I cannot remember any meaningful word, I only remember the author of the book is a teacher in Kennedy University, so I began search on amazon.com. Its directory facilitated me in search. I felt excited it really understands customer and extent of understanding is unprecedented.

I believe service industry can increase out productivity. We will put more effort in innovation of service industry.

IBM concerns Service Innovation because Service Economy, especially information service, develops fast, in particular the fast development of business information. Why does IBM concern this industry? Let's look at our income: it comes from service industry basically. So we need more Service Innovation and need more attention on this.

Five reasons for the lagged service industry in China

The service industry in China has developed since the reform and opening to outside world. But there is great gap compared with that in the developed countries or even some of the developing countries. First, the percentage of added value of service industry in GDP is too low. Second, the percentage of the labors employed in service industry in the whole employed labors is lower than that in most of developing countries. This rate was 40% above in 1999 for most of the developing countries but in China it is les than 30%. Third, the technical contents of service industry are low; the internal structure is mainly the traditional service industry with low labor productivity. In 2000, the per capita productivity of labor employed in service industry is over US$60000 in America, Japan and Europe Union. It is only US$2000 in China. Fourth, service industry market is not open enough, there is no sufficient competition, and the transformation of ownership structure of investment in service industry is sluggish. Fifth, service industry is not developing in balanced way; there is great difference in rural and urban region and different regions. Public service resources are not distributed evenly.

The added value of service industry in China increase from RMB Yuan 96,640,000,000 in 1980 to 3,888,500,000,000 in 2003. It increase by 9.5 time in 23 year computed at the comparable price with annual growth rate 10.3%. However, the situation that China service industry faces is the lagged development. The background report, submitted to the forum by the Strategy and Regional Economy Research Department under Development Research Center of the State Council, points out that there are five reasons for the lagged development of service industry in China:

insufficient industrialization of service industry hampers the fast development of service industry. Service industry is in the state that governments and enterprises mixed together, governments and institutions mixed together, profit organization and none-profit organization mixed together.
The market extent of China service industry is not enough, monopoly operation restricts the increase of competency. Market does not play the basic role in the resource distribution in service industry.
Too many regulations and openness is lower. Opening of service industry in China is later than opening of manufacturing industry generally and extent of open is low than that for manufacturing industry.
Lagged Urbanization. The increase of urbanization level can create demand basis for the development of service industry. The scale and structure of development of service industry depends on the urbanization level and size and structure of city. The production and living ways of rural population have less demand on service industry. The restriction of human migration in existing system inhibits the development of service industry.
Shortage of talent. The development of modern service industry, especially of knowledge-intensive service industry, required massive professional talents. There is a severe shortage of high-level talents because lacking of attention to the cultivation of talents for service industry for long period.

[Viewpoint] Make Money from “Service”, Are We Ready?

The gap is there! ——Chen Jian, Professor of Management Science and Engineering Department of Tsinghua University

Compare the percentage of service industry in Top 500, service industry counts 30% in Top 500 of China while service industry takes 60% in Top 500 of world. There is also difference in operation revenue and asset percentage. The size of service industries of Chinese enterprise is smaller. Top 500 of China service industry is only about 5% of the Global Top 500, operation income takes over 4% and profit is even less, only over 3%. In addition, the service industry enterprise is small, the threshold for Top 500 service industry is only RMB Yuan 50,000,000,000. while the threshold for Global Top 500 is RMB Yuan 100,000,000,000. Compare the size of our large companies with world large companies; Telecom Company of China is only 1/4 of that of the largest telecom in the world. The best one is logistics industry, its size is about 1/3 of that of largest on in the world.

Moreover, there is strong state monopoly in service industry. Among Top 500 enterprise of service industries in China, finance takes 5, energy takes 3 and communication takes 2 in the first 10 business. All these 10 are monopoly. Although energy has begun to open and power networks are being divided, these are no competition basically.

The internal structure of overall service industry is not balanced. The percentage of that represents modern service industry are very small, for example, there is obvious gap between the percentages of education, health, finance, insurance and real estate in the service industry and that in the develop countries. The overall layout is not balanced. For example, the development of service industry in Beijing is similar to that in the developed countries. But there is a great gap in Helongjiang and Xinjiang.

In service system, business and operation level is low and customer satisfaction is low either. According to the survey by Horizon Group, the satisfaction rate is less than 70% for insurance industry, about 70% for banking industry and a little over 70% for civil aviation industry.

Based on this reality, it is suggested to study from management point, what is service strategy? What is service marketing? What is service operation and what is service quality control?

View Angle of China Herself!
— Zhu Daoli, Professor of Management Institute of Fudan University

I think we should look at the “service science” from the study view of China. It is out of question that the percentage of service in Chinese economy is increasing. Scholars of China can conduct studies on leading edge subject as the American scholars do. We know all Intel chips are designed according to the temperature and environment in North America and the life of chip is closely related with the temperature, dust in the air. There is much more dust in the air in China than in North America. But we have not seen the chip designed based on the cleanness of air in China. This is also true to study of Service Science. Existing service theory and concept is practical in North America. Is adjustment needed in China? If yes how?

Reference and Innovation Required!——Zhang Jincheng, professor of International Business Institute of Nankai University

The service management includes service marketing, service quality, and human resource management and service operation. Now we raise the “Service Science”, it depends on how we define it. Because operational research is also called management science. Management science is only used in information technologies with modern technology as a kind of tools in management and solve problem with model. Whether the Service Science we mention now is in the meaning of operational research or a discipline in management? This problem deserves rethinking.

Another concern is reference and innovation, for example, service takes 75% of the profit for manufacturing industry. From point of view of manufacturing industry, how can it create and increase the best value of enterprise through service? What is the approach?

Service Innovation should be centered around people!——Li Qi, professor of Management Institute of Xian Jiaotong University

There should be two eyes for Service Innovation and Service Science. The first one is economic sight; it is for the growth of national economy. The second eye is human sight because service is for people in end. It is surely centered on people whether it is a collective or individual, government or enterprise, or consumer. I believe the core of Service Economy is the combination of these two sights. Why Service Economy can grow rapidly in both the developed country and China, I believe it is because of the combination of the two sights. It will last. Close combination will enable our Service Innovation or even Service Science find the motivity and fundamental objective of development.

Research View Should Be Wide!—Wang Yihua, Professor of Economy Management Science of Tsinghua University

Will Service Science be established academically? How to build it? How we foster the useful talents for society and industry? The exchange between these two aspects is valuable. Many problems are beyond the power of teachers now. This is a problem of system that cannot be solved by university. It is a very big problem that deserves efforts to study.

I believe it is farsighted for IBM to raise the issue. It is also in the interest of development of itself. People raised issue of computer science years ago. The result is it had great effects in academic circle and industry. I felt separating computer science from mathematics at that time was professionalization. It formed an independent discipline along the way of professionalization. I think that rising out Service Science now is integration because service is not the thing related with IT only. I think first of all IBM raised a challenging issue. The second step is how IBM will drive the development of the discipline. I understand IBM may concern IT-related aspects. But if we study this issue as a scholar, I believe we should not be confined to such narrow view.

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