Emerging Science of Services – RADMA Conference 2006 – Lake District, UK

By Guest Blogger – Kemal A. Delic

As we sensed that the end of the splendid Camelot days was approaching, we tried to envision a very distant future in which services will represent the major part of the economy (+75%).  Thus, we thought that our crystal ball was clear in a misty Lake District, the UK in 2006 telling us that sooner or later that would be the market reality. We rightly predicted that the arrival of big, mega, hyper cloud structures would be followed by the rise of analytics (based on long-running AI research) creating the infrastructural basis for a contemporary Digital Economy. Still today, this is something waiting to happen.

EMERGING SCIENCE OF SERVICES

We desired to expose in the academic RADMA conference (long-running since 1980) an novel idea; we advocated articulation of curriculum to explore and advance Science of Services and create a sound basis for technology developments and business and markets growth.

Fig. 1 – Service Systems seen as research in Complexity

The very first opening slide was hinting at a complex, emerging phenomena shown as bees’ colonies which despite the long-running research are still not fully understood today. We tried to outline the basic differences between product and service economies and sketched long-term trends with diagram Fig. 2

Figure 2. The rise of Services and Value of Data and drop of Infrastructure cost predicted

At that time, HP was a heavily product-oriented company shipping hundreds of millions of boxes per year with products, while also becoming an up and coming player in outsourcing service business.  We sensed that the time of big changes was coming and inevitably our organization and our careers were to be impacted. Some fundamental characteristics and differences driving these changes are captured in the table above.

Figure 3. Cloud fabrics hosting wide variety of business – explored as complex system

Services are defined as an intricate interplay among people, processes and technologies we firmly established that exploration should take an angle of complex systems research. We also clearly pointed at business running in a cloud-dominated market (Fig. 3) while exhibiting some challenging phenomena deserving further study in academic circles.

Fig. 4 – Parting shot – Service Sciences curriculum suggested

Step further, we have outlined the big picture of forthcoming curriculum, which we thought should replace the typical combination of engineering and business curriculum. So, the idea was that service science will be the field at the intersection and balanced mix of already established sciences providing education and jobs for the future generations.

PARTING WORDS

These three-part blog postings cover some 7 years of important professional insights which we have republished here as the proof that the sound ideas and good work are marked by their longevity and lasting impact. We have been right about WHAT will happen and NOT necessarily WHEN. This is also to close an important part of our joint past history on the positive note and well-grounded, high optimism as we are happily navigating our third professional age.

Thanks Wayne for hosting me here!

Bon Voyage!