ISS 2020 Vision Future of Service Management | Page 94

Businesses in the future will come to rely on the creative intuition of the value creator and
their ability to implement ideas that address complex problems. They are the ones responsible
for applying knowledge in an actionable way and bringing an organization’s vision to life.
There are opportunities for service professionals and designers to envision and develop service
concepts that are aligned with the ambitions of the value creator and deliver the experiences
they expect. With the value creator in mind, Service Managers should seek to act as specialist
advisors, providing the user with the knowledge and means necessary to reach their ends in
an open and collaborative manner.
Service touch points & actors
The value creator is a social individual by nature, preferring a work environment that is
scalable and adaptable to more project-oriented work. Much of the work of the value creator
is in collaborative, team settings that rely on flexible schedules and participation from a large
group of contributors. They are champions of co-creation and decentralized decision-making
and embrace all aspects of the peer-to-peer or sharing economy. They often use public
transportation, ride sharing or other car-pooling schemes in order to get from point A to
point B. They are experts at working together across disciplines and professional boundaries.
The creative mind of the value creator cannot be turned off and on like a factory engine,
and people in creative work cannot help thinking about their work when they have time off.
Conversely, it also benefits them to take “creative breaks” at work. Such creative breaks can
take the form of physical or mental games that take the mind off the task at hand and returns
it full of energy. With creative work, the boundaries between work and leisure are eroding
and must be accommodated with effective service design. The value creator views play and
games as central parts of innovation – it can often be difficult to distinguish innovation
sessions from silly games. They believe breaks from work are healthy for the mind and body –
and the mind works best in a healthy body. For the value creator, imagination and playfulness
are increasingly important parameters for success. Today’s icon is the PayPal billionaire Elon
Musk, who has started a number of “overgrown teenager” projects involving space travel,
electric sports cars and super-fast trains.
Again, the importance of soft skills for service professionals is undervalued for users like the
value creator. Developing personal accountability, interpersonal negotiation skills, adaptability
and flexibility, creative thinking, and inclusion can all increase the service performance, when
it comes to meeting and exceeding the expectations of the value creator.
Implications for FM
As we are seeing the rise of the creative user – for whom it is important to take part in
designing, developing, or making the products, services or experiences they engage with –
providing opportunities for this sort of co-creation is becoming increasingly important as a
competitive parameter.
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