Hello all,
in the meantime the Service Innovation Journey went on to Aachen, where the famous RWTH Aachen opened its doors to show the current state-of-the-art in service standardization strategies. Well, standardization seems to be boaring at a first look, but the innovation forum turned out to be highly exciting and featured latest research from a joint initiative between DIN (Deutsches Institut für Normung e.V), fir (Forschungsinstitut für Rationalisierung) and a range of further research and industry partners.
Standardization might account for economic benefits which have been estimated at 16 billion euros a year for Germany alone. In addition it is seen as a major driver of innovation. And as we all know from the Web 2.0 world templates, norms and restricted solution space can definitely boost creativity and innovation. Just imagine Wikipedia or just Blogs without templates, open innovation without rules or innovation toolkits without predefined solution space. Well, what we all know from the software and internet realm also applies to the service world.
It’s norms and standards that make services tradable and ready for world-wide export, like containers can be seen as the icon of globalization. Interested in the “German Standardization Strategy“?
Could we imagine individualization and personalization at a large scale without standardization? Have a look at the current issue of CICERO magazine … it comes with 160,000 different front covers and an additional 160,000 back covers based on the 2007 Reuter’s archive with about 50 million fotos … customization at its best … is there still the traditional divide between mass communication and individual communication … the boundary seems to blur … and this is why the innovation journey will soon focus on service customization – but this is another story to come soon …
All the best
Kathrin
www.wi1.uni-erlangen.de / www.clicresearch.de
