The Service Innovation Handbook: Action-oriented Creative Thinking Toolkit for Service Organizations

by Lucy Kimbell

This is an action-oriented book for managers and entrepreneurs who want new ways to tackle the issues they face in terms of developing and delivering services. The book focuses on service organizations, but has a broad interpretation of what services are. This is because these days, even jet engines and cars are bundled into services that create value by bringing people and resources together in different ways. The central argument is that managers and entrepreneurs designing service offerings will benefit from using approaches and methods from design and the arts. A very strong, more practical follow-up title to BIS Publishers's successful This is Service Design Thinking .

Genres: Design, Business, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published September 9, 2014

Reviews

[Michael Cabus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Service design deserves this book. Too many books on service design lack rigour and creativity, in part because the authors seem happy enough to just deal in what I’ll call navel gaze writing: a bare surface of content written maybe for self promotion. I hesitate because that can’t really be it. Perhaps it’s the need to justify the field itself.

For me, and many other designers, justification seems beside the point. We all saw the inevitable conclusion that UX design would morph into thinking about design across customer touchpoints, as the diversity of digital interaction and systems (technical and human) necessitated thinking beyond silos of interaction.

Given this context there is no better working book I’ve found that gives the reader both challenging and inspiring concepts around service design, and practical tools to get started, with the possible exception of Mapping customer experiences. This book isn’t afraid to challenge the reader and talk about larger concepts. For a business analyst or UX designer this is inspiring stuff. I’ll refer to this book in future for ideas and methods. It’s a true gift to the field in such need of serious, creative and interesting work.

[Michel Jansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good mix of theoretical frameworks and practical methods. The book manages to give a pretty complete view on creating innovative services, building on concepts like lean startup, business model & value proposition generation etc. (though sometimes using slightly different terminology). Those expecting a true handbook with prescriptive instructions will be disappointed. It's not that kind of book. For managers and more experienced practitioners or strategists, it offers a solid theoretical base and a refreshing change in perspective on new and existing methods & techniques.

[Victor Melgarejo Zurutuza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mucha gente habla de Design thinking, pero la importancia de innovación en los servicios se hace imperativa. Aquí una gran guía

[Noelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really good frameworks in here but prolly a bit too theoretical rather than practical to apply in many organisations unless super large corporate?

[mellyana · Rating 3 out of 5]

A resource book.