New service development process

Today, many companies are facing rapid changes stimulated by technological innovations and changing customer demands. These companies realize that developing new products and/ or services that satisfy customers and developing them fast is crucial to their survival. New service development (NSD), parallel to new product development (NPD), is a complex process involving multiple functional groups, each with a different perspective. Despite the importance of NSD, many organizations lack systematic support for NSD. In practice, NSD is often accomplished in a subjective, ad hoc manner; that is, it is done entirely on the basis of teh developer's experience or a team's consensus. Given that NSD involves numerous factors, such a subjective process is difficult to apply in developing competitive and sustainable service. The purpose of this chapter is to review the existing efforts toward the systematic support of NSD and to discuss promising research issues in this regard. It should be noted that this chapter is geared toward the engineering, rather than the marketing perspective of NSD, and, as such, is mainly concerned with the systematic development of new services using suitable models, methods, and tools.