Conceptualizing smart service systems

TLDR

Recent years have seen the emergence of physical products that are digitally networked with other products and information systems to enable complex business scenarios in manufacturing, mobility, or healthcare. The study conceptualizes smart service and smart service systems by using smart products as boundary objects that integrate consumer and provider resources and activities. Smart products enable monitoring, optimization, remote control, and autonomous adaptation, allowing consumers and providers to retrieve and analyze field evidence and adapt service systems based on contextual data. Smart service systems are characterized by technology‑mediated, continuous, and routinized interactions, reshaping foundational service science concepts.

Abstract

Recent years have seen the emergence of physical products that are digitally networked with other products and with information systems to enable complex business scenarios in manufacturing, mobility, or healthcare. These “smart products”, which enable the co-creation of “smart service” that is based on monitoring, optimization, remote control, and autonomous adaptation of products, profoundly transform service systems into what we call “smart service systems”. In a multi-method study that includes conceptual research and qualitative data from in-depth interviews, we conceptualize “smart service” and “smart service systems” based on using smart products as boundary objects that integrate service consumers’ and service providers’ resources and activities. Smart products allow both actors to retrieve and to analyze aggregated field evidence and to adapt service systems based on contextual data. We discuss the implications that the introduction of smart service systems have for foundational concepts of service science and conclude that smart service systems are characterized by technology-mediated, continuous, and routinized interactions.