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Services Sciences, Management and Engineering
According to a National Academies report, IBM played a key role in the creation of computer science as an academic discipline in the 1950s. At the time, IBM was the industry leader in computing technology and provided systems to universities for research and educational purposes. As the leader in this area, IBM had the most resources to share with universities, and it made good business sense for IBM to help establish an academic field that would contribute to its business growth and value.
Now, the global economy and, consequently, IBM's business have shifted to a predominantly services-driven model. This change has allowed IBM to gain an unmatched depth of knowledge about services engagements. As with computer science, IBM has the experience and technology to work with universities to create a new field that will provide the skills and training that students entering the workforce need.
IBM has thousands of technical researchers and business consultants around the world dedicated to services. This group has created a dynamic testing ground for SSME theories and practices. In addition, many IBM researchers are collaborating with academics who can help drive new programs and courses, and establish a new community around SSME.
Potential IBM-SSME collaborations include:
- Develop methods and skills to create reusable assets
- Sponsor centers, journals and conferences
- Honor the innovative work of faculty members and students
- Service on curriculum and research advisory committees
- Offer joint programs with IBM Research, IBM Business Consulting Services and IBM Global Services
In particular, IBM is eager to find ways to tap the enormous potential in new high value services, as technology allows the company to solve complex problems around organizational structure and service delivery. One particularly promising area of high value services is what IBM is describing as Business Performance Transformation Services (BPTS), estimated to be a $500 billion market opportunity.
At a fundamental level, BPTS is about understanding the core value that a company offers, and removing obstacles preventing that company from focusing on its primary business. IBM and universities are working together to understand how to help a company see its business as components - some fundamental to the business value and some not - and focus on the areas that are most crucial. Integrating the primary building blocks of a company with a web of expert solution providers to deal with the important, but non-core elements is a complex challenge that the SSME community is working together to solve.
Industrial and academic research will help establish SSME, which, in turn, will help create new ways of advancing high value products, solutions and practices, such as those needed for BPTS.
IBM faculty awards and sponsorships
IBM has provided faculty awards related to SSME to the following professors:
Henry Chesbrough, UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business
Chesbrough has been a driving force behind service science in the business community, with publications related to it in the Financial Times and in Harvard Business Review, as one of the breakthrough ideas of 2005. Chesbrough also offered the first explicited named service science course at Berkeley last fall (with Bob Glushko of Berkeley), and is working on a major paper on this topic (with Jim Spohrer of IBM Research).
Tom Malone, MIT, Sloan School of Management
Malone directs the MIT Center for Coordination Science, which aims to understand how people and technology can work together most effectively. Malone is working closely with IBM Research in business process modeling, a keystone of the service science effort.
Drew Isaacs, UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business
Isaacs is the Executive Director of the Management of Technology program at Berkeley, the premier program of its kind.
Bob Glushko, UC Berkeley, School of Information Management and Systems
Glushko has pioneered document engineering, which is clearly a major component of service sceince. Glushko just completed a book on this topic, to which David Cohn of IBM Research has written the foreward. Glushko also offered the first explicited named service science course at Berkeley last fall (with Hank Chesbrough of Berkeley),
Rhonda Righter, UC Berkeley, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
Righter has developed Berkeley's undergraduate major in Operations Research and Management Science, a program that combines economics, operations research, social science, and computer science in the study of industrial and service systems.
Bob Sutton, Stanford, Center for Work, Technology, and Organization
Sutton has brought rigorous scientific and evidence-based methods to the study and practice of management. Sutton co-founded (with Steve Barley of Stanford) the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization, which has brought together an interdisciplinary group of scientists to focus on how people work together and with technology to craete and capture business value.
Steve Barley, Stanford, Center for Work, Technology, and Organization
Barley's pioneering ethnographic studies of tehnical work practice have laid a foundation for studies of work practice in the service economy. Barley co-founded (with Bob Sutton of Stanford) the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization, which has brought together an interdisciplinary group of scientists to focus on how people work together and with technology to craete and capture business value.
Jim Fitzsimmons, UT Austin, McCombs School of Business
Fitzsimmons is a pioneer in the field of service management, and has co-authored its most popular textbook.
Jim Tien, RPI, Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems
Tien has argued effectively for creating the field of services engineering (with Daniel Berg of RPI).
Scott Sampson, BYU, Marriott School of Business
Sampson is a leader in the field of service operations.
Uday Karmarkar, UCLA, Anderson School of Business
Karmarkar directs the Center for Management in the Information Economy, and is currently studying trends toward industrialization in services industries.
Linda Macaulay, University of Manchester, UK, Informatics
Macaulay is working closely with Jonathan Adams, IBM, to explore the role of Patterns for e-business in supporting the emerging Services Science discipline (with Liping Zhao of Manchester).
Mary Jo Bitner, Arizona State University
Bitner is Professor of Marketing and Academic Director for the Center for Services Leadership, W. P. Carey School of Busines, Arizona State University
IBM has sponsored programs and papers on SSME to the following:
Tennenbaum Institute, Georgia Tech (Bill Rouse)
The Tennenbaum Institute for Enterprise Transformation at Georgia Tech focuses broad, interdisciplinary resources on on developing business practices and orgranizational cultures that will help enterprises become more effective and more competitive.
Best Paper in the Journal of Service Research (Roland Rust)
The Journal of Service Research, the premier academic journal in the area of services, gives a best paper award each year.
POMS Best Paper (Uday Apte)
The annual conference of the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) gives an award for the best paper each year.
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