ISSIP

About ISSIP

Collection of different people portraits placed as world map shapeThe International Society of Service Innovation Professionals, ISSIP (pronounced iZip),  is a 501 (C) (3) professional association co-founded by IBM, Cisco, HP and several Universities with a mission to promote Service Innovation for our interconnected world.  Our purpose is to help institutions and individuals to grow and be successful in our global service economy.

Service innovations improve the quality-of-life of individuals and the wealth of institutions, from businesses to nations that are increasingly dominated by service revenues and economics. Advances in information technology and policy support the rapid scaling of new service innovations in health, education, government, finance, hospitality, retail, communications, transportation, energy, utilities; even in advanced agricultural and manufacturing systems viewed as socio-technical systems, in which community-oriented recycling behaviors improve the economics, sustainability, and resilience of these human-serving systems.

We define service as the application of knowledge for the benefit of others, and service science as the study of diverse, interconnected, complex “human-centered value-cocreation systems” in business and society. Service innovations impact individuals and institutions at all levels, from family to community to enterprise to district, city, county, state, nation, and continent. In fact, these human-serving systems or service systems are the diverse, interconnected, complex systems that we live in, we study, and we work to change to benefit ourselves and future generations of humanity.

ISSIP promotes the professional development, education, research, practice, and policy work of its member individuals and institutions working hard to improve our world’s diverse, interconnected, complex service systems.

The five main objectives of ISSIP are to promote service innovation in…

1. Professional development and enhance career path opportunities of members.
2. Education and life-long learning opportunities of members.
3. Research and access to open data sets for all types and levels of service systems.
4. Practice, especially new tools and standards for the global community of practice.
5. Policy advocacy to enhance safety, security, sustainability, resiliency, etc. of service systems.

Objective 1: Professional Development
Career path opportunities depend on improving access and interactions with other members of the community.  A key sub-objective is to establish mutually beneficial relationships with other professional association.    The ISSIP promotes the development of T-shaped professionals with both deep discipline-based problem-solving skills and broad multi-disciplinary communications skills.

Objective 2: Education
Service science lays the foundation for understanding service systems in business and society.  As an emerging transdiscipline service science draws on many existing academic disciplines, creating a new whole, while enhancing the parts without replacing them.

Objective 3: Research
The advancement of service innovation research (and  body of knowledge for service science, management, engineering, design, etc.) depends on open access to data about service systems.  Grand challenge problems include instrumenting service service systems while at the same time maintaining privacy, security, and addressing other social, political, economic, environmental, etc. concerns.

Objective 4: Practice
The community of practice associated with service innovation is broad and inclusive.   The community of practice shares tools and standards for modeling and transforming service systems to improve quality-of-life of individuals and enhance the wealth of institutions, from businesses to nations.

Objective 5: Policy
Global and national service innovation policy includes the development of point-of-view documents and advocacy for enhancing the safety, security (including cybersecurity), sustainability, resiliency, etc. of service systems at all levels.

ISSIP is a 501 (C) (3) nonprofit organization not affiliated with any political parties or lobbying group. ISSIP funds are strictly used to advance ISSIP objectives to advance service innovation and ARE NOT used for electioneering communications, lobbying, or any other direct or indirect support of political parties or candidates.