In response, service science has emerged during the past decade as a transdisciplinary research field that aims to clarify, analyze, and design the structure and process of service systems. Service science is strongly motivated to prove the science of service systems. To deal with complexity, interactions, and the network of, in, and among service systems, we need to take a more systemic view. Because systems sciences offers a way of thinking in relationships and interaction and theories and models to address complexity, it is legitimate to develop systems sciences of service by explicitly focusing on systemic properties of service and service systems.

As a volume of the Translational Systems Sciences series, this book emphasizes, in particular, a translational systems sciences perspective when the authors are approaching service, service systems, and service innovation. Indeed, the book employs systems sciences as a common framework or language not only to approach service in a holistic way but also to take a translational approach aiming to explain, analyze, design, and support service systems and their evolution.