Where is the "Science" in Services

Day two opened up with Dr. Richard Straub giving a keynote that talked about the global transformation going on that's moved us from an agrarian society, to an industrial one to now a services-based one.


He gave a number of great examples from IBM's transformation from a hardware company to a services company, and then applied those to the general concepts to what Service Science is and why we should care.

Some of the key issues that Dr. Straub covered on Service Science included:

• What is it?
  
• Why now?
• Is it a new academic discipline, or a combination of existing disciplines?
• What need does it fill?
  
• What research is it based on?
• What role does business play in the evolution of Service Science?
• What need does it fill for companies and national governments?
• What can students who study it expect to learn?

It was the best example I've seen bringing together the concepts out of academia and showing how important they are to industry and how we need to work together.