-
Dave Gray, co-author of the great book, Gamestorming, and one of Rosenfeld Media’s strategic advisors has just written an excellent round-up of the rationale for service design in his Dachis Group blog post, Everything is a Service.
Dave writes about the argument and mindset from both cultural and business change perspectives – what we’ve been calling the “moral philosophy” of service design as a shorthand between ourselves recently. It mirrors much of what we’ve written in the opening chapter of our book and nods at some of the things we’ll be talking about in the conclusion. Accompanied by some of Dave’s seemingly effortless but excellent drawings, it really is well worth a read. A stand out sentence for me – clearly very American in context – was in the section where he talks about cars: “If a car can be a service, anything can.”
Gamestorming now has an iPhone app, which just goes to show that books are services too (if Rosenfeld’s publishing approach hadn’t already convinced you of that – don’t forget, “Our authors are brilliant, but write at their own unique, unpredictable paces.” Ahem).
Dave Gray on Everything is a Service
Posted on | 2 comments
2 Responses to “Dave Gray on Everything is a Service”
Svein Ølnes (@sveinol)
The meaning of a concept lies in its constraints just as much as its content. When everything is a service, the concept is effectively emptied of its meaning.
Andy Polaine
Svein – thanks for the comment. I agree that constraints help define a concept, but I’m not convinced that saying everything is a service empties it of its intended meaning. No more than saying everything is a product or everything is part of the planet’s ecosystem. It certainly makes the meaning very broad, which can be problematic.
The idea really comes from Vargo & Lusch’s Service Dominant Logic in which they argue that service is the fundamental unit of exchange. I think that’s true, but I think it’s probably more appropriate to argue that everything is part of a service of some kind. Certainly when it comes to designing, this is a more helpful way of thinking because it encourages one to think about how the parts fit together, which is usually the problem.