Data-Driven Understanding of Smart Service Systems Through Text Mining

Abstract

Abstract. Smart service systems are everywhere, in homes and in the transportation, energy, and healthcare sectors. However, such systems have yet to be fully understood in the literature. Given the widespread applications of and research on smart service systems, we used text mining to develop a unified understanding of such systems in a data-driven way. Specifically, we used a combination of metrics and machine learning algorithms to preprocess and analyze text data related to smart service systems, including text from the scientific literature and news articles. By analyzing 5,378 scientific articles and 1,234 news articles, we identify important keywords, 16 research topics, 4 technology factors, and 13 application areas. We define "smart service system" based on the analytics results. Furthermore, we discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of our work, such as the 5Cs (connection, collection, computation, and communications for co-creation) of smart service systems and the text mining approach to understand service research topics. We believe this work, which aims to establish common ground for understanding these systems across multiple disciplinary perspectives, will encourage further research and development of modern service systems.

Multi-factor service design: identification and consideration of multiple factors of the service in its design process

“…As in any interdisciplinary project, service design projects require a crossfunctional team with members from various functional units, including planning, design, engineering, IT, and marketing; all the five studies involved various types of experts. The MFSD method is useful in such an interdisciplinary environment to ensure an integrative design of modern complex service systems (Frost and Lyons 2017;Lim and Maglio 2018). The MFSD method is useful for synthesizing contributions from different fields from the perspective of key factors of the service in question, allowing integrated design of service idea, concept, and process, starting from the solid consideration of customer value creation mechanism.…”

“…A scientific methodology to alleviate the load would be useful to practitioners. For example, as shown by Lim and Maglio (2018), a text mining approach would contribute to easing the task of collecting and analyzing keywords related to the service in question to classify them into several terms that represent the key factors of service. Second, key factors of emerging types of service should be investigated.…”

“…The delivery channel factor can be further decomposed into sub-factors such as technology mediation in delivery, delivery by front-office, and delivery by back-office (Bettencourt 2010). The multi-factor nature is inherent in any service because services are systems of different components (e.g., people, information, organizations, and technologies) that operate together to create value (Maglio et al 2009;Lim et al 2012;Frost and Lyons 2017;Lim and Maglio 2018). Describing a specific service with a fixed set of factors is useful (Mont and Plepys 2003;Lim and Kim 2014) but difficult because of the fuzziness of service description; people find different factors in describing the same service because of their different experiences and references (Glushko 2013).…”

“…They also indicated that the design of such systems should consider the five factors. Lim and Maglio (2018) identified five factors of smart service systems, called the ''5Cs'' (connection, collection, computation, and communications for co-creation), from text mining of 5378 scientific articles on such systems. Bettencourt (2010) focused on the process factor that affects customer value creation.…”

Configuration in smart service systems: A practice‐based inquiry

“…However, a common critique is that this research pays scant attention to how humans and smart technologies will actually interact and with what consequences for humans and for smart service systems (Breidbach, Antons, & Salge, ; Maglio, ; Maglio, Kwan, & Spohrer, ). In contrast to the close attention paid to smart technologies, references to “people” (Lim et al, ; Maglio & Lim, ), “value co‐creation” (Lim & Maglio, ), or “human‐centeredness” (Maglio et al, ) maintain analytical distance from day‐to‐day human activities. Smart technologies and services are forecast to enter in human experiences in highly personal, even intimate ways, so that theoretical and empirical insights from a human‐centred perspective are needed to guide innovation towards anticipated improvements in individual well‐being (see also Breidbach et al, ; Maglio et al, ).…”