by Dr. Jim Spohrer

We encourage industry practitioners and executives to become a mentor in the ISSIP Mentorship Program, which aims to increase the quantity and quality of service innovation related mentor-student interactions.  ISSIP mentorships provide industry participants with the opportunity to develop a pipeline of candidates for internships and employment within their, customer, or partner organizations. For students, ISSIP mentorships are a great way to improve their personal brand and standing in professional associations, and to expand their network of professionals who are aware of the project work undertaken with their mentor.

For example, here is a blog post describing an ISSIP-IBM-Hult mentorship.  In this mentorship, Jim Spohrer (Director, IBM Global University Programs, ISSIP Founding Board Member) mentored eleven Hult Students who had recently taken a Service Thinking course taught by Prof. Hunter Hastings (Hult) and Prof. Jeff Saperstein (Hult) at the San Francisco campus of Hult International Business School.

The students improved their personal brands, social media professional brand (e.g., LinkedIn profiles, etc.), and developed case studies that applied six Service Thinking principles (stakeholders – service systems, capabilities – co-creation, sourcing – component models, scaling – glomoso, change – run-transform-innovate, sustainability – multi-sided metrics) to IBM Social Business partnerships with large, medium, and small companies.  As part of the mentorship, the students visited IBM Research – Almaden in San Jose/Silicon Valley California, and participated in a Service Thinking Case Hack-A-Thon to compete for prizes at the IBM Innovation Centers in Foster City, California.  The mentor also provided an endorsement on the LinkedIn profiles of the students, and offered to provide ongoing advice and help in future job applications.

ISSIP is working on templates and models to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of mentorships for industry practitioners and executives, students, and faculty.  For example, the student assignments in the above mentioned mentorships were tweeted to the mentor, as links to SlideShare presentations to be reviewed, or short 2-5 minute YouTube videos to watch.  This allowed all student assignments to be reviewed and commented on in a highly efficient fashion through social media tools.  The final outcomes are captured in this single blog post with links to nearly two dozen videos.

Please contact the ISSIP Mentorship committee for more information on becoming a mentor, and how to create ISSIP Mentorship templates that fit your organizational needs.  Faculty who would like to find industry mentors for their students, and students interested in finding industry mentors, are also encourage to contact ISSIP.