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 is to promote and disperse knowledge on the research contributions made by service scholars in Finland both on a national and international level.

The primary goals of the FSA are:

• to bring together service researchers and professionals interested in service
• to create a platform for discussion both between scholars and business professionals
• to collect and disperse information on research contributions and research projects in the field of service
• to encourage collaboration between researchers on interdisciplinary initiatives in the field of service
• to connect the expertise of researchers, educators and business professionals on the opportunities, issues and challenges related to service
• to advance academic research on service
• to organize events and seminars on current topics in service

The topics and themes will be created and determined by the members.

The board members of the FSA:

Jaana Auramo, Tekes – the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation

Sami Berghäll, University of Helsinki

Kirsimarja Blomqvist, University of Lappeenranta

Kimmo Halme, Ramboll & European Service Innovation Center

Anu Helkkula, Hanken  School of Economics

Minni Hietala, Aalto University, BIT

Mika Kautonen, University of Tampere

Satu Miettinen, University of Lapland

Katri Ojasalo, Laurea University of Applied Sciences

Risto Rajala, Aalto University, Service Factory

Marja Toivonen, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Richard Windischhofer, ABB

Before the constitutive meeting of the FSA, professor Christian Grönroos (Hanken School of Economics) listed in his keynote speech the questions that are important in the service research in the future:

• How to reinvent marketing to fit service?
• Are different internal accounting reports needed in service?
• How to utilize the internationalization potential of service?
• Do we really know how to implement internal marketing?
• How to organize service organizations so that they become truly customer-focused?
• Is there a future for the value and value co-creation concepts in service organizations?
• How to understand service design?
• How about service innovations?
• How to combine the internal issues of service science with the external demands?
• How to develop true service management?