This research proposes to support a workshop dedicated to the emerging area of service science, management, and engineering. It essentially aims at creating and supporting an effective venue for a group of leading scholars from academics and industries to exchange points of view of Service Science so as to gain better insights of service science, management, and engineering in general. Three sessions (Industry Perspective, Academia Perspective, and Roundtable Discussion) will be organized at the workshop to learn the current US service industrial needs and explore what and how Academics can effectively act on the challenges in both service research and education. In addition, this sponsored group will communicate with other worldwide leading scholars by delivering keynotes and panel sessions at 2007 IEEE/INFORMS International Conference on Service Operations and Logistics, and Informatics (SOLI'2007).
If successful, the workshop and PI's follow-on work with focus on the exploration of the insights of competitive service and service systems will advance the knowledge basis in service research. As certain hot-spot areas will be explored and corresponding priorities identified, some governmental research programs (e.g., NSF) and US service enterprises could potentially use the outcomes as one of references to develop corresponding future research agendas. Furthermore, as participants in a variety of disciplines will be selectively invited from different universities, thus the collaborative outcomes will produce very positive impact on education and training in terms of augmenting PI and participants' curricula, which certainly helps further promote Service Science education across the country and the world.
