Smart service innovation is the process of changing resource configurations, structures and value co-creation processes in smart service systems in a way that is beneficial to the actors involved (Anke, Poeppelbuss, et al., 2020; Edvardsson & Tronvoll, 2013; Vargo et al., 2010). It is enabled through smart products, which are connected devices, equipment or machinery with computational capacity, sensors and actuators (Beverungen et al., 2017). The smart service innovation process is challenging for organizations due to its complexity and uncertainty (Poeppelbuss et al., 2021; Ramirez Hernandez & Kreye, 2020; van Riel et al., 2004). It requires the involved actors to jointly manage the multi-actor complexity, to craft a smart service offering, to develop a technical solution, and to ensure economic viability (Poeppelbuss et al., 2021). Moreover, it relies on changing organizational culture and mindset and tends to disrupt traditional value-capture mechanisms, e.g., from product sale to subscription service (Anke, Poeppelbuss, et al., 2020; Kohtamäki et al., 2019).
Existing process models that specifically intend to guide smart service innovation find little adoption in practice and organizations rather rely on means from various disciplines that they adapt to their needs (Anke, Ebel, et al., 2020). At the same time, there appears to be consensus among both researchers and practitioners that the uncertainty of innovation processes can be addressed with iterative processes and agile methods (Anke, Ebel, et al., 2020; Beverungen et al., 2018). Nevertheless, little is known about which to choose and how to combine them for smart service innovation (Richter & Anke, 2021). Against this background, we develop a set of design principles (DPs) for smart service innovation processes that can guide organizations when setting up and steering innovation processes in their specific context. While DPs are typically discussed for technology-based or product-type artifacts (Gregor et al., 2020; Gregor and Jones, 2007), we focus on the smart service innovation process and, hence, on the design method (Walls et al., 2004). Our empirical data foundation is an interview study with 23 experts who were involved in real-world smart service innovation projects. From the rich data that they provide, we inductively derive a set of nine DPs for smart service innovation, including: facilitate role-based collaboration, get customer involvement right, go to gemba, and modularize design for scalability, to mention just a few.
By proposing a set of DPs, our research addresses the need for theory for design and action that is both grounded in empirical research and actionable for practitioners. Our findings provide practitioners with generalized innovation practices, which were found helpful by our interviewees in their diverse contexts of smart service innovation. The set of DPs suggests to depart from overly complex engineering process frameworks (Frank et al., 2020, Müller and Stark, 2014) in favor of more flexible combinations of loosely coupled methods instead (e.g., DIN SPEC 33453, Giray and Tekinerdogan, 2018, Holler et al., 2018). The DPs provide organizations with the required guidance while leaving enough flexibility.

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly challenged and destabilized already strained health systems around the globe. At the same time, the pandemic provides a window of opportunity for a significant transformation of health systems. We introduce the concept of ‘care ecosystem’ to support a deep reframing of health systems. Care ecosystems can be defined as dynamic and co-evolving communities that co-produce care or develop care innovations through various levels of collaboration, competition, dependence and independence (Dessers & Mohr, 2020). This biological metaphor is aligned with the paradigmatic shift from a biomedical to a people-centred care model and helps describing the systemic nature of value creation in a care service setting (Fisk & Alkire, 2021; Palumbo, Cosimato & Tommasetti, 2017). Service design is recognized as having an important role in driving service ecosystem transformation (Koskela-Huotari et al., 2021), particularly in the context of health systems (Patrício et al., 2019; Patrício et al., 2020). In service ecosystems, intended as a complex configuration of actors and resources coordinated by assemblages of institutions (Vargo & Lusch, 2016), such as care ecosystems, service design requires multidisciplinary contributions, that are largely missing (Prestes Joly et al., 2019). Related design approaches of care ecosystems and care ecosystem transformation are fragmented across different disciplines, including service design, systemic design and socio-technical system design. As a result, only partial and disjointed design approaches have been considered, leading to a systematic failure to address health system challenges holistically and missed opportunities for transformations.

The purpose of this article is to build a foundation for multidisciplinary research on designing for care ecosystem transformation. This conceptual research employs theory synthesis (conceptual integration across multiple theoretical perspectives) and model building (creating a theoretical framework that predicts relationships between constructs) (Jaakkola, 2020). In this process, we integrate literature on: service design, a human-centered, collaborative, creative, and iterative approach to service innovation (Meroni & Sangiorgi, 2011), especially as it connects to designing service ecosystems, rather than just touchpoints or interfaces, e.g. medical devices (Vink et al., 2021); systemic design, integrating systems thinking and its methods, with human-centred design to address complex, multi-stakeholder service systems, such as care networks (Jones & Kijima, 2018); socio-technical system design with its aim of joint-optimisation of social and technical subsystems, which has been proposed for designing for issue-based ecosystems where multiple actors share the interest to solve complex issues (Mohr & Amelsvoort, 2016); and service system transformation which recognizes the analytical dimensions of scope, endurance, and paradigmatic radicalness in understanding different transformations within service systems (Koskela-Huotari et al., 2021).

Through an integration of these disciplinary perspectives along with contextualization in discussions of health systems and health policy, this research builds a conceptual model of designing for care ecosystem transformation. This paper also contributes to the development of a shared language across disciplines for the ongoing development of this multi-disciplinary domain. In doing so, this research contributes to a much needed paradigmatic shift when thinking about designing for healthcare and builds an agenda to establish this novel multi-disciplinary research stream.

Akin to the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of transformation has emerged as an overarching theme of life, with an increasingly restless consumer base searching for meaning and long-lasting change (Storey & Storey, 2021). Despite Pine and Gilmore (2013) noting the Transformation Economy almost a decade ago, the service design literature and practice has failed to identify how transformative experiences may be deliberately co-designed and embedded within an organisation’s core service offering. This oversight representing a theoretical opportunity. The research combines the fields of experience design and creativity to deal with the ineffable phenomena of transformative experiences in the extended service context of higher education. Higher education is of particular interest due to the widespread problem of student disengagement with the experience suggesting that a reconceptualisation of the university system is on the cards (Barnett, 2019).

Specifically this study seeks to answer the overarching research question of: How might transformative experiences be collaboratively designed for a service organisation as a core service? In doing so, this project simultaneously explores Objects FOR Design (things that assist people to collaborate in a design task), alongside Objects OF Design (constructions and concepts to respond to a problem) (Zamenopoulos & Alexiou, 2018). This project draws upon innovation, design and creativity literature to explore the process component of the project (Objects for Design) through RQ1: How might the design task be framed to guide divergent thinking for transformative experience design?, and draws upon Customer Experience Dimensions (Gentile, Spiller & Noci, 2007) from the services marketing literature for the outcomes (Objects of Design) component of the project, exploring RQ2: What transformative experiences might be integrated within the core service offering of higher education institutions?

This investigation involves three co-creation workshops (12 participants in each workshop, n=36 total) to futurise the university service as providing sustained opportunities for transformation, self-discovery and reinvention. The co-creation workshops use three different approaches to elicit divergent thinking and enable futurising amongst co-creators, being Analogic Reasoning (Imagining the University as a Tourist Experience), Narrative Storytelling (Imagining the University as a Hero’s Journey) and Backcasting (Imagining the University as a Reinventive Institution). The Creativity Support Tool Index (Cherry & Latilupe, 2014), adapted from the field of Human Computer Interaction Design, will be subsequently used in semi-structured interviews to explore how each approach assisted co-creators to engage in the design task.

The results of the analysis will be presented at the conference (data collection occurring in March 2022), with the research advancing knowledge surrounding both co-creation modalities and creativity support tools, alongside the mobilisation of organisational resources for the practical design of transformative experiences within the core service experience. Specifically, the research makes a practical contribution for universities seeking to enhance their value proposition in an increasingly competitive knowledge market, and respond to the growingly restless consumer base seeking reinvention and long-lasting personal change – answering calls for transformative education and the re-establishment of the university’s epistemic authority (Paul & Quiggan, 2020; Parker, 2021; Pine & Gilmore, 2013).