Decision: Service Concept

Even though I’m an engineer by education, most of my innovations have been tangential to engineering in the field of methods (systems thinking, systems engineering, engineering management, decision management, roadmapping, etc.).  Along the way, I’ve spent quite a bit of my time designing new consulting services that I’ve humbly named with outlandish titles such as:

• Rapid Payback consulting services
• Do the Impossible consulting services
• Accelerate Ideas into Reality consulting services

These kinds of human-intensive services call for a variation of the product design decision pattern; Each service within your Services Portfolio starts with a Service Concept decision.

Although service design is typically a bit simpler than the creation of complex hardware/software products and systems, there are great opportunities for innovation this area.  The internet has provided a new delivery platform for all types of knowledge-intensive services.  Research in social sciences regularly uncovers new human behavioral patterns that can be exploited to create value within new service bundles.  Decision patterns are particularly valuable in service design, because of the highly abstract nature of the “components” that make up a solution.

I’ve also used a variant of the service design pattern for courseware design.  I’m planning on making the Courseware Design decision pattern available as an option for group subscribers whose service offerings are primarily educational in nature.

I encourage you to think of a service that you deliver or receive and quickly blitz through the decision pattern to see if you can fill in your current answers for each decision.  Then start a Decision Driven® Strategy trial, capture this snapshot for real and start innovating new ways to deliver even greater value through this service.