Abstract
Service design as a new market category has emerged quite rapidly since the first pioneers; live|work in 2001 and Engine 2002 started offering service design commercially and claimed the label. Since then; a service design field has developed; which features institutions such as the Service Design Network; Master courses at universities; and academic conferences. Recently; the success of service design attracts management consultancies; which include service design as part of their core offering. This represents a challenge for the pioneers; as modifications of the practice might lead to ambiguous meanings and hence the category as a whole can suffer from devaluation by audiences. As a consequence; the entire category is likely to turn into a fad. In order to prevent this from happening; pioneers have several strategic options at their disposal. In the following; we propose a research design; which suggests the theory of ‘Authentic Adaptation’; pioneers might react in drawing from their heritage; while also adapting to the new context.
Keywords
service design; market category; fads & fashion; pioneer; meaning
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/servdes2014.46
Citation
Kirchberger, E.,and Kennedy, M.(2014) The Future of the Service Design Category: Authentic Adaption as a Way Out?, in Sangiorgi, D., Hands, D., & Murphy, E. (eds.), ServDes 2014: Service Future, 9–11 April, Lancaster, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/servdes2014.46
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Papers
The Future of the Service Design Category: Authentic Adaption as a Way Out?
Service design as a new market category has emerged quite rapidly since the first pioneers; live|work in 2001 and Engine 2002 started offering service design commercially and claimed the label. Since then; a service design field has developed; which features institutions such as the Service Design Network; Master courses at universities; and academic conferences. Recently; the success of service design attracts management consultancies; which include service design as part of their core offering. This represents a challenge for the pioneers; as modifications of the practice might lead to ambiguous meanings and hence the category as a whole can suffer from devaluation by audiences. As a consequence; the entire category is likely to turn into a fad. In order to prevent this from happening; pioneers have several strategic options at their disposal. In the following; we propose a research design; which suggests the theory of ‘Authentic Adaptation’; pioneers might react in drawing from their heritage; while also adapting to the new context.