Many years ago, I worked for Hewlett Packard in Human Resources Development and I was in charge of organisational development for three business units.

I recently read a story about the butterflies in Zion National Park: apparently, there aren’t as many of them as there used to be and, after decades of research, scientists have finally figured out why.

Creating service innovations is like going on a journey full of challenges and rewards.

The growing importance of services in the global economy and the need to foster firms’ competitiveness has brought service innovation to the forefront of research and practice priorities.

Government support for innovation has traditionally focussed on technology and manufacturing.

When embedding service design knowledge in a third-sector organisation, we were faced with a challenge to prove the value of the approach in a time of unforeseen financial difficulties.

As service designers and catalysts of change in organisations, we have all observed how perceived barriers impede progress, even where progress is possible.

The following academic research project captures the work of a five-member team for a capstone class at the Weatherhead School of Management.

In early 2009, the Dutch government laid out new requirements for its federal agencies, aiming to put in place cost-savings and efficiency measures.

Business transformation is certainly not easy, but service designers are implicitly prepared to be successful.

Organisations have systems and structures in place to make them efficient, but these very structures also make them inert.

Decades of practicing medicine have created a system that teaches physicians and members of the care team best practices to replicate standardised behaviours, the very antithesis of change.

Creating a customer experience that is seamless across multiple channels is a challenge that service design aims to take on.

All service design problems intersect, at least to some degree, with issues of organisational design and change.

Service prototyping has been a valuable method in service development for Nokia, UNICEF, Lappset group and many other companies. SINCO, (Service Innovation Corner) is a prototyping lab for service and interaction design at the University of Lapland.

Our work at Engine over the last ten years has taught us that great services need great organisations. So it often happens that, by designing a service, we address an organisational challenge.

Working for organisations that have no prior experience in using design-led approaches to develop their services can present a challenge for service design practitioners.

Tasked with building a new sailing programme by merging two organisations, the newly appointed director of the Chicago Park District’s Judd Goldman Sailing Program sought assistance attracting participants and increasing retention.

Strategic planning is no longer what it used to be. While some organisations persist in following traditional planning methods, quite a few are experimenting with highly collaborative, interactive and holistic ways for strategy design and deployment.

“I Attempt to Get to the Essence of the Design Solution in the Same Way that I Aim to Find the Essence for Each Poem.”

“Sometimes It’s More Important to Let go of Control and Generate a Shared Understanding…”

The Service Design Network moves from strength to strength: starting in 2008 in Amsterdam and with two conferences last year, the first national conference in June in Paris, this will be the fourth Service Design Network global conference and, for the first time, it will be held in the United States.

On the 24th and 25th of June, the first Service Design Network national conference took place in Paris, France.