iSIM: An integrated design method for commercializing service innovation

© 2015, Springer Science+Business Media New York. Service innovation is focused on customer value creation. At its core, customer centric service innovation is technology-enabled, human-centered, and process-oriented. To profit from such innovation, firms need an integrated cross-disciplinary, holistic method to design and commercialize service innovation. From diverse but interrelated strands of theories from service science, strategic management, organization science and information systems literatures, this article develops a new integrated design method, known as iSIM (integrated Service Innovation Method), for simultaneous service innovation and business model design for sustained customer value co-creation with the firm. Following design science research method, the article theoretically defines and integrates iSIM’s seven constitutive design process-elements: service strategy, customer type / value proposition, service concept, service system, customer experience, service architecture and monetization into a coherent and end-to-end aligned integrated design method. It explains how iSIM would be holistically and iteratively practiced by practitioners, and conceptually exemplifies its utility via telco and Amazon case studies using secondary data. Perspectives on iSIM from selected practitioners are discussed which confirm iSIM’s potential utility for their business. Managerial implications of implementing the iSIM and potential areas for further research are also discussed

A performance reporting tool for electricity service delivery for selected local South African municipalities

Thesis (PhD (Industrial Systems))--University of Pretoria, 2021.Basic services such as sanitation, waste removal, water, and electricity supplies are necessary for life, well-being, and human dignity. In South Africa, municipalities are the sphere of government constitutionally designated to provide these services. With months of rolling blackouts and volatile operating performance, Electricity Service Delivery (ESD) deserves some attention and improvement because it is setting the country on a pathway to national emergency, weakening investors’ confidence and stagnating the country’s already problematic economic growth prospects. Since improvement does not materialise spontaneously, deliberate and purposeful actions are required to understand the current state of ESD, extract stakeholders’ intentions for an improved ESD (diagnosis), and then devise means to operationalise the intentions. This study focuses on performance assessment with initial reporting capabilities to provide adequate information and insight for diagnosis of ESD within South African local municipalities. It starts by exploring a systematic literature review of available tools for diagnostic service performance assessment. Then, it extracts and validates, through a focus group session, the criteria which such tools must satisfy to be considered useful in the South African context. The study is based on a Design Science Research (DSR) methodology and follows an inquisitive process of multi-stakeholder engagement to extract evidence about existing functional and constructional ESD areas of concern/requirements. The study inductively develops an artefact, the ESD Performance Reporting Tool (ESD-PRT) to guide improvement in electricity service delivery in South African local municipalities. The ESD-PRT continuously extracts performance metrics from Power System Resources (PSR), citizens, and organisational competencies of the municipalities, with provisions for emerging areas of concern and requirements within design domains and sub-domains. It was evaluated for practicality and usefulness based on the DSR iterative approach and compared to the closest available similar solution. This entry point solution to an optimised local municipality ESD would guide the redesign of ESD and potentially save South Africa billions of Rands currently lost to energy losses, downtime in economic activities and social discontent occasioned by power outages and rolling blackouts. The study was demonstrated in three local municipalities geo-located in two different provinces. The researcher believes that the study outcome would apply to most local municipalities in South Africa. However, its applicability to metropolitan municipalities still needs to be tested.Industrial and Systems EngineeringPhD (Industrial Systems)Unrestricte