Blinding glimpse of the obvious
Resellers will be wryly amused by a learned report on innovation in the service sector released yesterday, based on an international symposium hosted by the University of Cambridge Engineering Department’s Institute for Manufacturing last July.
The symposium was sponsored by IBM and Bae Systems, and the report contains contributions from more than a hundred academics and business leaders from all over the world. The executive summary is here. The full report can be downloaded from the home page.
Rather breathlessly, the report points out that although seventy-five percent of the British labour force works in the service industry, it only attracts a third of total R&D spending.
The report’s main recommendations are:
· Universities should offer courses in the emerging field of Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME) – teaching graduates to become “adaptive innovators”, capable of working entrepreneurially across traditional boundaries.
· Researchers should embrace an interdisciplinary approach to address business and societal ‘grand challenges.’
· Governments should fund SSME education and research and collaborate with industry and academia to develop service innovation roadmaps.
· Businesses should establish employment policies and career paths that encourage ‘adaptive innovators’ and provide funding and support for service research and education.
‘The growth of services economies, coupled with the evolution of businesses from multinational businesses to globally integrated enterprises, calls for a new approach in order for individuals, industries and countries to remain innovative and competitive,’ said Dr. James Spohrer, Director of Service Research at IBM.
‘Service-orientation is critical for our future business model which we have been transforming over recent years,’ said Paul Tasker, Programme Director for Support Solutions Research at Bae Systems. ‘Our work with the University of Cambridge is contributing to this journey and the White Paper is welcomed as an important signpost.’
To what? We’re already there.
