Now Inviting Founding Members, Editors, Authors and Sponsors
Interested in supporting this Initiative? Please contact us.
The science and practice of service dominant logic and service ecosystem design have enormous, untapped potential to speed up society's capacity to develop and disseminate transformational innovations for improving health and wellbeing in society. However, there is currently a lack of societies or journals specializing in this area. There is a pressing need to fill this gap, to speed up research, learning, innovation and action in this important area.
The vision of the International Society and Journal for Service Ecosystem Design is to be recognized as the leading global society and journal for research, learning and action in service ecosystem research and innovation. .
We believe that a new paradigm of research and practice - that of service-dominant logic and service ecosystems - offers a potentially transformational pathway for speeding up dissemination of innovations in society at ecosystem-scales. As noted in a recent paper (Vargo, S et al, 2017) , this paradigm rests on five axioms which offer new ways to think about many of the most important challenges facing society today:
Services (Not Products) are Fundamental. Service is the fundamental basis of exchange in society
Value is co-created. Value is co-created by multiple actors, always including the beneficiary
Resources are for Everyone. All social and economic actors are resource integrators
Beneficiaries determine value. Value is always uniquely and phenomenologically determined by the beneficiary
Institutions Coordinate. Value co-creation is coordinated through actor-generated institutions and institutional arrangements.
Researchers studying the service dominant-logic (SD-Logic) paradigm are increasingly looking at service ecosystems as a focus of study.
Service Ecosystems Can Be Managed. Service ecosystems - defined a collection of entities, artifacts and institutions organized around shared purposes - can be studied and managed, to create new value.
As shown in Figure 1 , service ecosystems can be defined as a collection of:
Entities (individuals and organizations)
Artifacts (products/services shared among individuals and organizations),
Institutions (rules, laws and oversight groups governing sharing of artifacts among entities)
Purposes (measurable goals that emerge from human interactions that help guide decisions about sharing of artifacts). Health ecosystems are a type of service ecosystem focusing on population health and wellbeing as a primary outcome measure.
We also believe that new collaboration-science based methods and virtual collaboration tools are opening new doors to collaborative action.
We believe that collaborative research and innovation in the area of health ecosystems has potential to strengthen the capacity of societies to address large-scale systemic challenges that threaten population health and wellbeing. This new framework opens a door to new spaces where leaders, experts and researchers from many different areas of society, and multiple research disciplines, can come together in new ways, to collaborate, and co-create answers to questions such as:
What are health ecosystems and service ecosystems?
What are their generalizable attributes?
What factors affect how they work?
how can health ecosystems be enhanced to improve the health and wellbeing of populations served?
What methods can be used to study, develop and implement solutions?
What actionable steps can individuals, organizations, networks, government and policymakers take to improve health through ecosystem-level interventions?
We are inviting a "coalition of the willing" to join us in an action research study designed to co-create an initial "consensus" design for a society and journal that can help address this problem.
We are seeking $250,000 to launch this project.
Scholars, leaders, experts and sponsors are invited to pre-register to be part this project. When a critical mass sign-up, a kick-off meeting will be organized.
Round 1. Virtual Kick-off Meeting; Completion of Initial Surveys
Round 2. Refining Design Elements; Virtual Meeting; Follow-up Surveys.
Round 3. Finalizing Design Elements; Virtual Meeting; Follow-up Surveys
Round 4. Verify Design Elements; Follow-up meetings with key stakeholders; finalize design and implementation.
The journal will initially be organized in English. Leaders, experts and researchers from the US and across the world are invited to join the study.
Anticipated outcomes of this planning study may include:
Engage a founding group of leaders and experts and scholars interested in forming a new Society of Health Ecosystem Research and Innovation
Engage a founding group of scholars interested in serving as editors and/or submitting papers to a Journal of Health Ecosystem Research and Innovation -
Develop a "Society and Journal Design, Version 1" including
Recommendations for organizing, structuring, funding, governing, and operating the Society
Publish a case-study paper reporting on what was learned by the researchers during the action-research process.
Principal Investigator
Assistant Professor and Executive in Residence, University of Louisville, School of Public Health and Information Sciences, Department of Health Management and Systems Science. Investigator with NSF CHOT at UofL.
Co-Investigator
Associate Professor, Director, University of Louisville Frazier Polypharmacy and Medication Management Program, School of Public Health and Information Sciences, Department of Health Management and Systems Sciences, Investigator, NSF CHOT at UofL
Co-Investigator
Associate Professor and Chair Emeritus, University of Louisville, School of Public Health and Information Sciences, Department of Health Management and Systems Sciences. Investigator, NSF CHOT at UofL. Health and population health informatics.
Co-Investigator
Executive in Residence, University of Louisville, School of Public Health and Information Sciences, Department of Health Management and Systems Science. Modeling.
Co-Principal Investigator
Adjunct Professor, Health Sciences Informatics, Johns Hopkins University; Managing Partner, National Health Information Infrastructure (NHII) Advisors; Former Senior Advisor, NHII, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services; Former Member, Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice, National Academy of Medicine.
