Excellence in Service Innovation Awards

At ISSIP, we celebrate the pioneers who are reshaping industries through service innovation. Our annual Excellence in Service Innovation Award honors these outstanding contributors who have introduced groundbreaking solutions with significant impact on business, innovation, and society.

2026 Service Innovation Award Winners

Explore the cutting-edge innovations from our latest awardees. Each winner has demonstrated exceptional creativity and impact in their respective fields.

Impact to Society

Innovation: Don Norman Design Award

Organization: Don Norman Design Award

Primary Contact: Srini Srinivasan (LI) (DC)

Don Norman (LI) (DC), Srini R Srinivasan (LI) (DC), Rao Machiraju (LI) (DC), Anil Kripalani (LI) (DC), Arlene Harris (LI) (DC), Christine Trimble (LI) (DC)

Summary: Many nonprofits, NGOs, Foundations, and government agencies aim for societal benefit. DNDA is unique in emphasizing quality of life above cost and schedule, ensuring that the work is done with and by the community for which it is intended. Many groups claim to use human-centered design (HCD). DNDA focuses upon Humanity Centered Design (HCD+) – The power is in the plus – thinking of the entire system that impacts the work, including the ecology, the environment, the multiple stakeholders, and primarily, the interests, concerns, and capabilities of the community members. We focus on the services that are offered, recognizing that every product is, in actuality, a way of delivering services, but only if the entire broadly based system is considered – how the service impacts the ecological system, all living things, and the culture of the community.

Impact to Business

Innovation: Cisco AI Assistant for Support, AI Intelligent In-Product CX

Organization: Cisco Systems, Inc.

Primary Contact: Nik Kale (LI) (DC)

Nik Kale (LI) (DC), Shankar Ramanathan (LI) (DC), Foster Lipkey (LI) (DC), Necati Cehreli (LI) (DC), Johan Castro (LI) (DC), Ullie Versavel (LI) (DC)

Summary: Cisco AI Assistant for Support, AI Intelligent In-Product CX, is an embedded AI engine that moves enterprise support from reactive and portal-based to intelligent and in-product. Cross-functional teams across CX, BU, and product design unified decades of institutional knowledge – drawn from a corpus of 1.7 million support cases per year – into a three-layer architecture that delivers proactive recommendations, AI-powered diagnostic reasoning, and guided resolution directly inside the product workflow. The engine captures product metadata, user context, runs diagnostics, and escalates to human engineers when needed – across cloud, on-prem, and air-gapped environments. With 200,000+ users and 15,000 weekly engagements across multiple Cisco product families, the platform is Cisco Secure Development Lifecycle (CSDL) certified and built to WCAG 2.2 accessibility standards. Its unique combination of proactive intelligence, domain-specific reasoning, and human-centered design establishes a new paradigm for enterprise customer experience and digital resilience.

Impact to Innovation

Innovation: iForAI

Organization: iForAI

Primary Contact: Ofer Hermoni (LI) (DC)

Ofer Hermoni (LI) (DC), Asaf Yosifov (LI) (DC), Ira Komarova (LI) (DC), Coby Sternlicht (LI)

Summary: iForAI delivers end-to-end AI Transformation through three integrated pillars: Strategy, Development, and Upskilling. Starting with strategic alignment, iForAI helps organizations identify and prioritize high-impact use cases – turning AI curiosity into a clear, actionable roadmap. Through hands-on development, we coach cross-functional teams to rapidly build and validate MVPs, supported by turnkey infrastructure, enterprise MLOps, security, and ethical governance that move solutions from prototype to production. Upskilling sits at the core of the model through global and internal AI hackathons and continuous capability building, iForAI transfers lasting AI competency to client teams. The result is a repeatable, scalable pathway that reduces risk, drives measurable business outcomes, and enables organizations to lead and sustain their own AI transformation from within.

Awards Team

To recognize and amplify ISSIP member work and initiatives aligned to our mission, ISSIP annually evaluates and recognizes Excellence in Service Innovation with impact for Society, Business and Innovation itself. Meet our Awards Committee which calls for these nominations in the Fall, rigorously and objectively rates submissions, and presents awards in the Spring. Additionally, ISSIP presents a range of awards and recognitions to support development of ISSIP member technical eminence.