Month: October 2012

  • Service Innovation: (Having a) Meeting with Customer Needs

    Vast number of new service concepts fail (> 4 out of 10), because they are build first and then introduced to the market (Bettencourt, 2010). The focus should be another way around and shifted away from the service solutions and back to the customer. Rather than asking, “How are we doing?” companies must began asking…

  • Service Design meets Futures Thinking #2

    A research based series of posts discussing the statement “Futures Research supports the Service Design process in multiple ways and throughout the whole process” by Minna Koskelo and Anu K. Nousiainen. Part #2: Synergistic Principles of Service Design and Futures Research We start our second blog post with where we left you in the first…

  • Forerunner Service Companies – the Trendsetters of Service Business Innovation

    by Jenni Aranko It is widely acknowledged, that services will gain ground from the traditional manufacturing and product-based approaches. As a part of this change, it has been recognized that market value is equally important focus point for the operations of a company as revenues and profits. Intangible assets such as knowledge, customer relationships and…

  • ICSSME2012 conference greetings!

    by Dr. Päivi J Tossavainen Regards from the ICSSME2012 conference. ICSSME2012 is a newcomer conference of service research field. Organized by World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology (WASET), the conference took place October 8-9 in Dubai, UAE. There were about 100 participants in the event from countries around the world. The two days provided…

  • The Finnish Service Alliance: a new collaborative community for service scholars and practitioners

    The constitutive meeting of The Finnish Service Alliance (FSA) brought 180 service researchers and business professionals from all over Finland to Espoo today. The FSA is a new forum for service scholars and professionals to share research contributions and to discuss about the opportunities and challenges within the service field. The mission of the FSA…

  • Meet the guardian angels of the Service Innovation & Design (SID) Masters Programme

    The competence the students gain in Laurea’s international SID Masters Programme is  on a world class. The SID Masters Programme was launched in 2009 as the first SID Masters Programme in the world. This pioneering initiative has started very well. The programme has attracted highly motivated and talented students from all over the world. The…

  • The nature of “innovation” is changing

    by Jane Vita, Sofia Nyyssönen, Tinja Lindförs and Tiia-Marina Silva The world is always changing and everything goes around adapting. Some companies that have more vision are already looking for the new market – we call them forerunners. These companies have a new vision and concepts in their minds such as design thinking, agile methods,…

  • Service Design meets Futures Thinking – IN ACTION

    Before our 2nd blog post for the series of Service Design meets Futures Thinking, we have a special news for you ! The first test environment for combining Futures Thinking with Design Thinking takes place in Helsinki in two weeks ! This is an invitation to all design thinkers, futures thinkers, strategic minds and innovative…

  • Co-create your future

    In today’s world the competition amongst companies within the same industry or sometimes even across industry boundaries is rough. New businesses are constantly born and they want to get their share of the wallet. There are many books and articles that will provide guidelines, how to improve your business concept and gain advantage from the…

  • Fishing for a circus strategy

    “The show must go on”, is a very common phrase in a show or performance. It means that the audience has to be kept entertained at all times. But, it doesn’t say what happens when the show gets old? How does a show performance keep selling tickets after repetitive shows and apply this phrase? But…