By Niels Feldmann
In June 2013, ISSIP’s German chapter was officially established by the Service Innovation team at Karlsruhe Service Research Institute (KSRI, http://www.ksri.kit.edu). The German ISSIP chapter aims to build a community of professionals dealing with Service Innovation management. KSRI’s 5th anniversary in late June, as well as the KSRI summer school in late September, provided the necessary platform to launch the chapter. At both occasions, renowned ISSIP members helped promote ISSIP in general, and the chapter in particular. Dr. Jim Spohrer did not miss the chance to draw peoples’ attention to ISSIP during his keynote celebrating KSRI’s anniversary. For those whose curiosity had been captured by his words, the German team offered an information booth at the event’s reception. Similarly, during the KSRI summer school, ISSIP member Dr. Stephen Kwan introduced ISSIP in his keynote.
Building on this great support, the German chapter has since gained 12 members, including practitioners, scholars, and graduate students, all of whom specialize in aspects of service innovation. In fact, these three groups reflect the target audiences of the German chapter. To connect the individuals from all backgrounds, the chapter aims to provide an environment that supports its members in advancing their professional career in the area of service innovation. Scholars are provided with an opportunity to gain insight into case studies from practitioners, to extend their network of corporate partners for future research proposals, and to get access to fellow up-and-coming researchers with a focus on service innovation beyond the boundaries of their own institutions. Practitioners, on the other hand, can gain easy access to inspiration from academia, access to students as potential new-hires, or promote their organization’s success stories. Finally, graduate students benefit from better access to practitioners’ in their fields of interest for future internships, employment, or research contacts.
In order to quickly ramp up activities and communications, our chapter will bootstrap from the beginning, using regular conference calls, and soon after, a joint repository for sharing and inspiration on the Internet. All further formats will be subject to experimentation and prototyping – an approach fairly familiar to experts in service innovation management. Following our headline “ISSIP’s German chapter sets sails”, we would like to invite you to join us on our journey. For any inquiries, please get in touch with the chapter’s local focal point Niels Feldmann (http://www.ksri.kit.edu/Default.aspx?PageId=912&lang=en).
“Fair winds and following seas“ to ISSIP and all our chapters!