Management Insights

The service sector now accounts for more jobs globally than either manufacturing or agriculture. Continued growth of the service sector requires service innovations that raise service quality and productivity. Even large manufacturing firms are getting more and more of their revenue from offering services. Yet creating service innovations reliably is difficult, particularly for knowledge-intensive business services. Creating service innovations often means integrating technology, business, social, and client innovations. Traditional focus on individual areas or disciplines—such as engineering, management, and social science—is now giving way to interdisciplinary studies and interdisciplinary skills. Specifically, service science is a new interdisciplinary area of study that aims to address the challenge of becoming more systematic about innovation in service. It has recently emerged in business schools and in engineering schools, in curricula and in research, and it promises to shape the landscape of service businesses and service workers now and in the future.