Last week, I gave the keynote address at the 2008 Logic and
Science of Service Conference in Hawaii.
The conference, focused on service-centered research and sponsored by the IBM Almaden Services Research Center, was co-chaired by Prof. Steve
Vargo (University of Hawaii) and Prof. Bob Lusch (University of Arizona).
Steve and Bob are also the authors of an award-winning
article on Service-Dominant (S-D) logic of marketing (Journal of Marketing,
2004) that argued for a shift away from the goods-dominant (G-D) logic that has
pervaded much of our thinking so far. The foundational proposition of S-D logic
is that organizations, markets, and society are fundamentally concerned with
exchange of service. Thus, as per S-D logic, service is exchanged for service;
all firms are service firms; all markets are centered on the exchange of
service, and all economies and societies are service based. A very interesting
and thought-provoking perspective!
In preparing for my presentation at the conference, I was
struck by how close some of the themes discussed in The Global Brain are to those
espoused by the S-D logic – in particular, the role of customers.
As stated in the book and elsewhere in my research work,
customers form an important part of the Global Brain, and increasingly firms
will co-innovate and co-create value with customers. The S-D logic also embraces
the concept of co-creation of value – as Steve and Bob note, “instead of firms
being informed to market to customers, they are instructed to market with
customers, as well as other value-creation partners in the firm’s value network”. Thus, the focus on collaborative innovation and value co-creation, that is the premise of The Global Brain, underlines the S-D logic too.
The challenge then for companies would be to put together
and offer the appropriate set of resources and knowledge to facilitate the right
level of involvement of customers in the co-innovation or co-production of the
service offerings. Companies who are able to “integrate” the knowledge and the value
that is thus co-created by customers (and by other network partners) are
likely to see themselves well ahead in the game!
