SERVICE INNOVATION & SERVICE DESIGN - A TECTONIC SHIFT IN THE SERVICE INDUSTRY


         We know that how social computing, service innovation and service designs are slowly but steadily gaining importance in our society. The external and internal business environment are getting  benefited from it.

             Service innovation takes place when there is an exchange between firms and customers, where all the providers are service providers and goods are merely the provision of service. Service Design plays a key role in service innovation because it brings innovative ideas to life through a design thinking process through its human centered and holistic design thinking approach. Thus social design and innovation are the cornerstone for strengthening the impact of service research. Likewise, social computing plays a vital role in transferring information between the customers and the providers.
        In this digital age of Information and Technology, social computing is playing an important role in creating service innovations, which is catering to the customer’s needs and satisfying their want. Let us take the example of Starbucks. Starbucks through its own website MyStarbucksIdea.com receives three to five ideas daily. A bulk of these ideas requested Starbucks to offer nutritious meals including hot sandwich. Starbucks initiated this discussion in its own platform, by consulting various stakeholders. After a healthy discussion, Starbucks started offering hot sandwich in their own “coffee house” menu. Thus we see that how an interaction in social computing website platform, i.e. MyStarbucksIdea.com, made a social innovation, i.e. hot sandwich in the “coffee house” menu.
        

        Thus, this social innovation in one way is fulfilling the need of the consumers at one time and also increasing the collection of revenue of Starbucks through its additional sale of hot sandwiches along with its traditional items in the menu. From this example, we can conclude how social computing along with service innovation is benefiting both the external as well as the  internal business environment.
        There are three level of analysis of service innovation: - Service ecosystem, service platform and service processes. Similarly there are three themes of social computing. They are technology features and designs; technology use, integration and management; its impact and value measurement.
        There are many challenges that hamper the advancement of service design and service innovation in the service research and practice. Firstly the concept of service design and innovation is not a well known concept among the people and is poorly defined. Secondly, with the change in the technology, new opportunities are being created but the process of how to use this new technology to innovate service through service design remains unclear. Thirdly, it is unknown how service design and innovation can impact other service research areas. Thus there is a need for further exploration and development.
       In order to increase its relevance, service innovation and design should move beyond understanding the problems to developing the solutions. For expanding the foundation of service design and innovation, there are three areas that have to be looked into. Firstly there must be an improved connection between service design and service innovation. Secondly there must be a deep involvement in the multiple actors. Here actors mean various components among which interaction occurs, such as customers, organization, technology etc. Thirdly using technology for the advancement in the field of service design and innovation.  The focus of service innovation should be on customer’s needs and satisfaction. The complexity addressed by the service design and innovation has increased due to the evolution of the business and service environment,but also because service design and innovation, as a consequence, have gradually addressed increasing levels of complexity in the service system.
               Thus we can conclude that social innovation, social computing and service designs are interlinked with each other and are playing an important role in the development of the internal and external business environment.

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