還有...

十二月，包含IBM、惠普與Accenture、EDS等科技業的競爭對手，齊聚美國華盛頓，討論一門正在崛起的新學問。

這門科學未來能否落實在教育中，也在美國國家科學研究院（National Academy of Sciences）掀起討論。

 

同一時間，全球教育界也發現，包括美國的柏克萊、史丹佛、康乃爾、南加大、以及英國的牛津大學，都已經悄悄開設相關課程或投入研究。

這學問就是服務科學。此外，IBM也宣布，在未來十年內，將招募五萬名服務科學人才。

 

In other words, IBM is combining anthropology, game theory and behavioral economics with technologies from its labs to see if it can make corporate processes run smoother. The first person recruited from outside IBM to join the group was, in fact, an anthropologist.

The goal of the program essentially is to better marry the company's extensive research division to the fast-growing services group.

In 2003, the group worked on some 100 customer projects in the On Demand Innovation Services program. Assignments have included finding a way to implement speech-recognition systems so that customers or employees would actually use them.

 Eric Johnson, a professor at the Columbia Business School, has found that maximizing "stickiness"--or increasing the time a customer spends on a Web site--is actually a bad goal for e-commerce companies to pursue. Stickiness usually connotes that customers are getting lost on a Web site. By contrast, Amazon.com has seen revenue rise and stickiness decline, because easy navigation brings customers back.

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The world economy is experiencing the largest labor force migration in history. Driven by an environment that includes global communications, business growth and technology innovation, services now accounts for more than 50 percent of the labor force in Brazil, Russia, Japan and Germany, as well as 75 percent of the labor force in the United States and the United Kingdom.

 Unfortunately, this shift to focusing on services has created a skills gap, especially in the area of high value services, which requires people who are knowledgeable about business and information technology, as well as the human factors that go into a successful services operation. Many leading universities have begun exploring and investing in this area, working in tandem with thought leaders in the business world. In May 2004, this group suggested that an entirely new academic discipline may be called for - first roughly described as services science at a summit held at IBM. Subsequent meetings have caused the discipline to evolve into the more appropriate Services Sciences, Management and Engineering title now used.

 

 

3. Collaborate with other universities who are leaders in SSME research: Berkley, Arizona State University, Carnegie-Mellon, Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oxford, Tsing Hua, North Carolina State University, Georgia Tech, San Jose State University and Stanford.

4. Participate in SSME evolution

• Champion efforts to promote SSME
• Conduct research in various challenge areas
• Build new course curriculum for degree programs
• Post SSME curricula and courseware on IBM Academic Initiative web site for collaboration
• Engage in SSME conferences and events