IBM and the Indian School of Business (ISB) announced today that they have established a research ‘Collaboratory’ at the ISB campus for furthering research in service science. This Collaboratory marks the beginning of a new phase of an expanded relationship between the two organisations.
An IBM Collaboratory is a laboratory where IBM researchers co-locate with a university, government, or commercial partner to share skills, assets, and resources to achieve a common research goal.
The Collaboratory for service science will initially have a team of 10 full-time researchers, five each from ISB and IBM Research – India. The team will focus on developing foundational techniques in service science, including the modeling, measurement, and optimisation of “service systems”.
Service research is multi-disciplinary and many variations exist today within the domains of management, operations research, and economics to name a few. While most of the existing work has focused on business-to-consumer services, the focus of this research is on business-to-business services.
Ajit Rangnekar, Dean, ISB, said, “We expect Services Management to be a huge area of focus for leading companies, and we are delighted to collaborate with IBM on this initiative. In keeping with the ISB’s emphasis on research, we believe our association will develop innovative solutions to enhance the way services are rendered."
In February 2007, IBM and ISB signed an MoU for joint research on Service Science, Management, and Engineering (SSME) in India. In May 2008, IBM India and ISB signed the first Open Collaborative Research agreement in Asia aimed at improving the competitiveness of the services sector in the region.
The joint research resulted in holding workshops, publishing research papers and tutorials in the area of service science. This Collaboratory is the next step forward in their joint exploration of the area of service science.