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Service Design: Innovation for Complex Systems

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The Palgrave Handbook of Service Management

Abstract

This chapter describes how service design, as a systematic process and a mindset, brings continuous innovation into the complex systems of service creation and delivery. Design is a key component of today’s service management. It no longer means management by administrating and controlling but instead involving other key stakeholders and enabling systems to continuously adapt to changes in user’s requirements, the environment, and the context of use. It also means exploring new and emerging opportunities and to translate those into services that deliver new levels of value to users.

Today, design is contextualized in a contemporary framework that has moved beyond styling and beautification to include the ability to reframe problems, discover opportunities, and co-create scenarios of solutions that do not yet exist, prototyping, testing, and implementation. It has become a strategic resource for innovation, particularly for those organizations who move from a product-led to a solution and service-led value business model.

This short contribution is playful and sometimes provocative, rooted in experience, reflection, and speculation rather than in deep scientific research.

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Correspondence to Birgit Mager .

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Mager, B., de Leon, N. (2022). Service Design: Innovation for Complex Systems. In: Edvardsson, B., Tronvoll, B. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Service Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91828-6_25

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