What is Service Science

Service science to the 21st century some argue, is what computer science was to mid 20th century. It was written off, as another non essential minor extension of the Electrical Engineering, not critical... mainly academic discipline, and something primarily for playful experiments in labs and garages. Recently came across this interesting illustration by Andy Ma from sun on this very comparison.

s

Source of above image: Talk by Andy  Ma

While I have not really come across anyone who has actually thought of service science as frivolous, there are still many minds, including mine at times, who wonder, what really is service science?? Is it really a science, or a term coined by few individuals to satisfy an academic hunger or some call of the business.

Here are some observations:

1. Service science unlike computer science, has not been born in academic playgrounds, but in the heart of our businesses, out of a growing need, to fulfill a gap which was left unfulfilled with application of all known sciences...

2. Service science, while has many dangers of being likened to Information technology (more so because of the modern context in which service science has emerged), it is really not so, because services preceded computers and technology as we know today.. by ages, or epochs I must say. Service as a concept has existed for ever...

3. Service science is vastly complex yes..because it is really a combination of various elements of science and in fact faculties outside the scope of science as we define today....interacting together heavily. It is really a multidisciplinary subject, which captures extreme ends of a spectrum...for e.g. hugely complex, and unpredictable human behaviors guided by psychological, biological, chemical drivers, to the usually predictable and stable computing machines, guided by some bits and bytes of programming. The context is important, depending on which you may have to reach out for any random faculty of knowledge to get answers. You may find yourself looking up annals of biology at times, and chronicles of history at times...to help you better deliver and approach a service.

4. One theme that strikes most from above is that at the heart of service science, is a lot of information, which needs to be efficiently created, extracted, transported, preserved, shared, managed, etc. etc. So personally I would put Information Management at the top of all faculties which influence the broader topic of service science. And would bet on advancement in related areas to precede any major breakthroughs in service science.

While I am making assertions and arguments, it is really incomplete without convincing examples. I would try to bring together from the literature, and knowledge others have already gathered, some substantial evidence for my reasoning. I am at this point of time personally convinced service science is here to stay, and thats why have put a reasonable stake in it myself in terms of my career. Hopefully, I would be able to generate some more opinion on the same and get some interesting collaboration going. Watch out for this space. Welcome to the world of services.

Here is what is IBM's View on Service Science and Management Engineering..or popularly known as SSME