Hyung-il Ahn photo Rama K. Akkiraju photoLaura Challman Anderson photo Salman A. Baset photo Alain Biem photoGrady Booch photo
Joel W. Branch photoDavid Breitgand photo Stephen J. (Steve) Buckley photo Rong Zeng Cao photoVictor Fernandes Cavalcante photoMELISSA CEFKIN photo
Yuan Chi Chang photoNirmit Desai photo Stephen Dill photoWeishan Dong photoMayuri M Duggirala photoElad Fein photo
Maira Athanazio De Cerqueira Gatti photo Wesley M. Gifford photoRichard T. Goodwin photoSandeep Gopisetty photoMUNISH GOYAL photoChristian Guttmann photo
Alan Hartman photo Stacy F. Hobson photoAXEL HOCHSTEIN photoMarcia Ito photo NANDA KAMBHATLA photoCheryl Kieliszewski photo
Senthil Kumar (Senthil Kumar) Kumarasamy Mani photo Krishna Kummamuru photoFreddy Lecue photo Jian Li photoLior Limonad photo Chun Yang Ma photo
SAMEEP MEHTA photo Hideyuki Mizuta photoPAVAN MURALI photoTaiga Nakamura photo NANJANGUD C NARENDRA photoMarco Aurelio Stelmar Netto photo
Rogerio Abreu de Paula photo Chang-Shing (Charles) Perng photoGopal Pingali photoClaudio S. Pinhanez photo Mu Qiao photoNITHYA RAJAMANI photo
Sreeram Ramakrishnan photo Yolanda A. Rankin photoValentina Salapura photoPat Selinger photoANSHUL SHEOPURI photoWanita Sherchan photo
Yedendra B Shrinivasan photo Roberto Sicconi photo BIPLAV SRIVASTAVA photoKarthik Subbian photoRikiya Takahashi photoMichiaki Tatsubori photo
Roman Vaculin photo Pradeep Varma photoLav R. Varshney photo Kush R. Varshney photoChristian Vecchiola photoASHISH VERMA photo
Juerg von Kaenel photo Maja Vukovic photo Christopher Ward photo Clay E. Williams photoJINJUN XIONG photoSergey Zeltyn photo
SAI ZENG photoLiangzhao Zeng photoNianjun Zhou photo

Additional Information

Related links

IBM Research

Computer Science

Electrical Engineering

Business Analytics & Mathematical Science

Project Name

Service Science

Tab navigation

Service Science is becoming a strategic area of scientific study at IBM Research. Historically, IBM has been a leader in applying mathematics, statistics, and operations research to traditional manufacturing problems such as supply chain management, transportation optimization and logistics management. While these concerns continue to be of importance to manufacturing companies, the shift towards service-based economies in certain parts of the world are bringing new business concerns to focus. Industry leaders need guidance on how to innovate, manage, evaluate and optimize their service businesses.

IBM Research is actively working with the world-wide research and academic communities to help define research directions for Service Science. These activities include new academic initiatives such as Service Science Management and Engineering (SSME) and sponsoring several conferences in this area to stimulate research and cross-disciplinary collaboration. The mission of the Service Science Professional Interest Community (PIC) is to stimulate this cross-disciplinary research and provide a forum within the IBM Research community in the study of theory, methods and application of service science, management, engineering and practice. In doing so, the PIC intends to positively influence and impact the external research community, collaborate with top researchers in the mission areas and attract top graduate student talent as potential hires.Service Science Research tackles difficult problems using the following approaches:

  • Service Oriented Technologies---Exploring the use and application of advanced analytic technologies to address the information service and business intelligence challenges faced by enterprises.

  • Business Architecture and Process Innovation---Designing and implementing a holistic approach to improving the foundations and practice of transforming global enterprises.

  • Complex Service Systems Modeling and Simulation---Modeling and simulating complex real-world service systems.

  • Service Quality and Experience---Creating and building advanced technologies intended to make workers more effective and processes more robust.


Servce Science Research Areas

  • Service Business Design and Strategy
    Value proposition and measurement
    Complex system modeling, optimization, simulation
    Business models, services value modeling
    Industrialization of service
  • Business Componentization
    Component models, valuations
  • Business Modeling, Monitoring & Management
    Business as a service, policies, formal representations, languages
  • Service Quality, Excellence
    Compliance, effectiveness, sustainability
    New measures & regulations
  • Service Delivery and Operations
    Productivity and versatility
    Service operations management
    Service delivery models, channels
  • Business aspects of Service Composition
    Human capability augmentation, self service
    Pricing of services
  • People in Services
    Customer behavior in networked environment, service social network and models
    Organizational relationship, alignment, and culture
  • Service Innovation Management
    Service Marketing


Community Highlights

IBM Sponsors INFORMS 2011 Service Science Best Student Paper Competition

This is the second year of the INFORMS Service Science Best Student Paper Competition and we are excited to have more than 100% increase (24 paper submissions) in student participation.

The Service Science Section of INFORMS announces the Best Student Paper Award to recognize excellence among its members. The awards program brings prestige to the Service Science Section as well as to the recipients honored.

The INFORMS Section on Service Science promotes and disseminates research and applications among professionals interested in theory, methodologies, and applications in Service Science, Engineering and Practice; and provides a forum for the exchange of new ideas in Service Science, Engineering and Practice.


  • 1st place winner---Valuing Preaaranged Paired Kidney Exchanges: A stochastic game approach by Murat Kurt (student winner), Andrew J. Schaefer, M. utku Unver, and Mark S. Roberts (Univ. of Pittsburgh)

  • 2nd place winner---Congestion Pricing for Service Industries by Wei Sun (student winner) and Georgia Perakis (MIT)

  • 3rd place winner---Are Consumers Strategic? Structural estimation from the air-travel industry by Jun Li (student winner), Nelson Granados and Serguei Netassine (Univ. of Pennsylvania)

  • Honorable mention---Designing Experiential Services by Ioannis Bellos (student winner) and Stylianos Kavadias (Georgia Tech)


    Service Science PIC & Targeted PIC Conferences

  • Business Process Management ---PIC Conference
  • IEEE International Conference on Service Operations and Logistics, and Informatics---PIC Conference
  • International Conference on Service Oriented Computing---PIC Conference
  • International Conference on Web Services---PIC Conference
  • International Conference on Information Systems---targeted PIC Conference
  • INFORMS---targeted PIC Conference
  • Frontiefs in Services---targeted PIC Conference

    Service Science PIC Co-Chairs
    Stacy Hobson , IBM Research Watson
    Yolanda A. Rankin , IBM Research Almaden