The ISB recently signed an MOU with technology giant IBM, to develop a ‘first-of-its-kind’ research on Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME), in India. As part of this initiative, ISB and IBM will develop cutting edge research and case studies, to streamline service processes and replicate them across industries.
Current world economy is experiencing the largest labour force migration in history caused by factors like broader global communications, growth of emerging markets, and technology innovation. This shift to services has created a skills gap, especially in the area of high value services. The new interdisciplinary academic field, SSME, aims at studying, improving, and teaching services innovation. The goal of the SSME discipline is to drive productivity, quality, and sustainability of services, while making learning rates and innovation rates more predictable across the service sector. This new academic discipline brings together ongoing work in fields of computer science, operations research, industrial engineering, business strategy, management sciences, social, cognitive and legal sciences, to develop skills required in a services-led economy. Many leading universities across the globe have begun exploring and investing in this area, working in tandem with thought leaders in the business world.
The ISB-IBM ‘first-of-its-kind’ SSME collaboration in India, offers an academic approach to understanding interactions between client and provider, using a mix of scientific and business concepts to help focus on areas that might not be core in either a

management or computer-science programme. M Rammohan Rao, Dean, ISB, remarked that this “strong industry –academia partnership” would become a very important management subject. “The ISB-IBM initiative will be immediately applicable in India, and also successfully replicated elsewhere in the world,” he said.
Endorsing the moment was Nick Donofrio, Executive Vice President, Innovation and Technology, IBM . “We are at an incredible tipping point for the world economy and it’s all around innovation,” he said. In a special lecture entitled ‘Expanding the Innovation Horizon’ Donofrio described innovation as a “culture” and not a “department”. He noted that innovation requires new skills to ensure that people, countries and economies remain competitive in this globally integrated world. He hoped that by investing in initiatives like SSME, IBM and the ISB will provide for those skills. Donofrio spoke about the emergence of the service sector and how innovation was the key.
Professor Viswanadham, Executive Director, Centre for Global Logistics and Manufacturing Strategies (GLAMS) at the ISB, said, “With 30% of the Indian economy dependent on it, the service sector plays a very important role. It is necessary to streamline, transform, and automate processes and develop human resources to deliver services more efficiently.”
As Donofrio remarked, “Innovation in the 21st century is different form what it was in the 20th. There is no more the ‘one big thing’ but a thousand of big things waiting to unfurl.”