International Workshop on Innovating Service Systems

Service science has been raised, and coming to be established as a research domain all over the world. This workshop in Tokyo has been motivated by the systems-design dimension of the service science. We aim to share and discuss a progressive vision to develop methods for innovating systems of service resources where novel values are created and supplied sustainably. A "service system" here is an artificially organized or self-organized active integration of the following resources:

1

Participants, i.e., providers and consumers of services, where a provider of a service may turn into a consumer in different contexts

2

Money, or other entities representing value, and their active flows: An utterance of praise can be also this kind of entity

3

Supply chains i.e., the chain of interactions from creators of service resources (products, information, food, etc) to consumers of services, and

4

Tools (computers, robots, sensing devices, etc) aiding the activities of (1), (2), and (3)

In this workshop, we discussed methods for designing and realizing service systems and parts of a service system, with positioning resources of the four kinds above in the systems to be created. By this, we aim to respond to the social demand to design an environment for value-creative and dynamic interactions among participants via resources in the market, rather than merely passing existing products and services from providers to customers for predetermined prices.