12 years are an awful long period of time and a lot has happened since. 12 years ago, on Sept 1st, 1995, together with Ralf Reichwald I published my first working paper in the field of service research. I remember the day quite well, as at that time it took me quite some effort to come up with some clear thoughts about the future role and future strategies of service value creation. For the first time writing a piece together with a senior management researcher has been an additional challenge, but an incredible chance. The paper is based on research we did together on service value creation and service productivity as innovation strategies. Well, it is written in German, no longer fully up-to-date … I want to say: “You don’t have to read it!” … it’s just a starting point.
In 1995, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research organized the first German Conference on Service Research “The Future of Services” and started a huge initiative – “Services for the 21st Century” – under the academic leadership of Hans-Joerg Bullinger. By initiating 13 parallel working groups nationwide that were charged to identify the most challenging and promising fields for service research an overall research and funding agenda has been developped. Service engineering and service design, service standardisation and benchmarking of service systems, service culture and service mentality emerged as some of the promising fields that were complemented by branch-oriented areas of focus, like financial services, high-tech services etc etc. Further German Service Research Conferences followed regularly. Results were published in conference proceedings and later made available online in the German Service Community Platform.
Now, 12 years later, the field is much further developed and has moved to the centerstage of management research interest. Therefore I have decided to finally make use of my webdomain www.service-innovation.de that for 12 years has been a domain waiting for a field to emerge 
)
My intent is to talk about my personal thoughts, about interesting international initiatives and activities as well as new funding opportunities in the field. In addition, there is currently an interesting “service innovation journey” starting. From September 2007 to February 2008 there will be a series of eight service innovation events across Germany showcasing latest research, discussing current approaches and discussing future directions. I plan to attend all of these events and will report regularly on this blog.
Join me on my journey!
Kathrin
www.wi1.uni-erlangen.de / www.clicresearch.de
