SHAPE : Gestaltung von Dienstleistungsentwicklungsprozessen und lnnovationspartnerschaften mit Unternehmen

Value creation is increasingly happening in complex ecosystems - especially in the German economy, which is predominantly shaped by SMEs. In order to be successful in the long term, companies need to establish customized, data-driven service systems around their products and services. The BMBF-funded research project SHAPE (“Service Orchestration - Development and Piloting in Ecosystems”) aims to support companies in this complex challenge.

The project's vision encompasses the iterative, data-driven development of service innovations, the flexible allocation of resources, the adaptation of relationships between the players involved and the digital transformation of their service ecosystems. The aim is to enable companies to implement data-based service innovations in service ecosystems more effectively.

By implementing dynamic resource allocation and agile adaptation of relationships between stakeholders, a universal methodology will be developed that promotes service innovation in different sectors. SHAPE aims to establish a customer-centric, cross-industry approach that increases the capacity for service innovation within ecosystems. Ultimately, SHAPE not only fosters innovation, but also reshapes the way companies and institutions work together to create value and harness the possibilities of the latest technologies such as generative AI.

At the heart of SHAPE is the “SHAPE Hub”. This establishes local competence centers to orchestrate various players from science and practice. The hub comprises local competence centers that serve as hubs in the innovation process. These centers prepare the developed approaches for specific target groups. Flexible, cross-sectoral support for implementation is offered through the transfer of specific know-how and skills, e.g. with the help of workshops or the provision of method sets. The aim is to create scalable approaches for establishing service ecosystems for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), public institutions and other relevant stakeholders.

The development is a collaboration between researchers from the IT Management and Consulting department at the University of Hamburg and the Karlsruhe Service Research Institute of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the research group of the Chair of Information Systems, Innovation and Value Creation at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Nuremberg and the FIR e. V. at RWTH Aachen University.

As part of this research consortium, Prof. Daniel Beverungen's team is working on (further) developing methods for (smart) service systems engineering in ecosystems.