Progress Update With Board of Directors (June 24, 2026 Recording)

The final materials from the ISSIP Board of Directors (All Welcome!) event from June 24, 2026 is now available: final recording, minutes, and slides. Also the pre-event slides with embedded videos and other pre-event materials were emailed to over 150 ISSIP Leaders and Ambassadors, and included in the ISSIP Newsletter (distribution 1500+ participants) to help everyone who could attend prepare for the discussion, with questions and/or comments.

The next Progress Update with Board (All Welcome!) event will be January 27, 2027 (registration link). For a list of the Progress Update events and Presidents since 2012, please see History of ISSIP.

In addition to the summary notes below, ISSIP participants are reminded of the following community opportunities:

(1) Recognition Opportunity: Your organization can submit nominations for the 2027 ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award Program (nomination form).

(2) Leadership Opportunities: Nominations for ISSIP VP 2027 – President 2028 are now open (VP nomination form). Nominations for 2027 ISSIP Ambassadors are now open (ambassador nomination form. Note: Successful candidate are active participants in the ISSIP community, or demonstrated history of significant contributions in related service-innovation-oriented communities.

(3) Speaking Opportunities: Ambassador-hosted series (speaker nomination form).

(4) 2026 Event Series Opportunities: Registering for, attending, asking questions, and otherwise contributing to the ISSIP Ambassador-hosted series are a great to engage with ISSIP leaders and make a contribution – give-get-grow, including: ISSIP Live! registration, AI-as-a-Service Series registration, T-Shaped Development Series registration, For-fee Certification and Study Guide Series registration, Resources and Servitization Series registration, Book Authors Series registration. Find out more about 2026 events here.

(5) Code of Conduct Requirement: All participants are required to add their email address to agree with ISSIP Code of Conduct (code of conduct agreement form).

Or send an email to info@issip.org to learn more about the above opportunities and participant requirement.

Progress Update Event Summary Notes: We had 28 people on the zoom (and an additional 5 AI notetakers), and 18 attendees got to speak, 10 did not. Five of eight ISSIP Board Members attended, and two who could not attend the live event contributed content to the new certification program discussion in advance. Haluk Demirkan welcomed everyone and thanked the volunteers, especially noting the great help that Kevin Clark had provided on Horizons planning work and the new ISSIP Live! event series. Kevin Clark described the importance of the ISSIP Live! as a program that new ISSIP institutional sponsors might support, as well as the two initial interviews, first with Jim Spohrer on ISSIP origins and then with Don Norman on his new book and global design award program, and the search for additional speakers to be interviewed. Christine Ouyang discussed the Strategy Council and broader Ambassador outreach for the Discovery Summit survey and AI impact on jobs, skills, and responsible adoption as not surprisingly the top “hot topics” as well as mentioning the opening for volunteer to Lead the Ambassador program that she has previously led. Haroon Abbu spoke about the ISSIP Excellence Award process and 2026 winners. Ofer Hermoni spoke about the I4AI ISSIP award (distinguished recognition) and the challenges and opportunities of AI adoption. Jim Spohrer re-iterated the preview slides and recording including comments that Michele Carroll, ISSIP part-time Executive Director, had, which were all been distributed in advance. Jim stepped through the AI Collab, Quarterly Welcome, Treasurer’s report, and introduced the goal of 100 Multiple Choice Questions and the Board Members examples – including Haluk Demirkan, Sunil Kripalani, Yassi Moghaddam, and Jeffrey Borek adding additional comments. Alex Kass asks for perspectives on biggest accomplishment and biggest challenge. Then Alex offered his own views that the job role “service innovation professional” is not well known. Mark Hiddleson mentioned he strives to be a “service innovation professional” while agreeing the term may not be well-known outside of ISSIP and a few other circles. Marietta Baba made the point about the importance of including “social scientists” in the hard task of creating a new job role/occupation category of “service innovation professional” and MaryCarrol Mazza added that as well in the chat comments about importance of social sciences. Michele Leonard emphasized that the new transdiscipline of “service science” is the only successful way he has seen to get people across academia, industry, and government to talk together with a shared language. Christine Leitner discussed upcoming HSSE in Turkey and the solid number of papers submitted. Andrew Spanyi updated folks on “Cognitive World ThinkTank, and his delight with an ISSIP partnership. Mention was made of the successful Values Conference that Markus Helfert had recently run in Ireland. Jim Spohrer noted at the end it is hard to both run the slides and be active in meeting comments.

How best to “ISSIP” (pronounced “I-ZIP”): Three ways our community-of-practice participants interact and cocreate value together:

(1): Stay Informed: ISSIP Newsletter (sign-up box on right-side) and ISSIP LinkedIn Company. Sign up to get access and follow.

(2): Join the Discussion: ISSIP LinkedIn Group. Contact info@issip.org for an invitation to join as a member.

(3): Volunteer & Cocreate Value: ISSIP Slack. Contact info@issip.org for an invitation to join as a member.

Remember that ISSIP (as a service system entity itself) is trying to accomplish something Aspirational, Hard, Unique, and Meaningful. The 2012 to present journey of developing ISSIP as a nonprofit professional association and community-of-practice (Aspirational), establishing a ‘service innovation professional’ job role (Hard),  establishing a T6-model for lifelong learning (Unique),  and all aligned with establishing a  ‘service science’ transdiscipline (Meaningful). Real-world service system operations, transformation, and innovation problems do not respect discipline boundaries, so a T6-model (disciplines, systems, geo/cultures, technologies, work practices, mindsets) for T-shaped adaptive innovators is proposed by ISSIP, based on prior work with industry and NSF. Service innovations typically scale up capabilities (often with advanced technologies), scale up benefits (often with new business models), and scale down harms (often with new institutional and regulatory arrangements). Service is defined as the application of resources (e.g., knowledge for the benefit of another) based on Service-Dominant (S-D) logic.. People, business, and nations are all service system entities that give-get-grow service offerings as they interact and change.”

Please feel free to reach out to ISSIP Leadership 1-1 or email info@issip.org with any comments, questions or concerns. Not sure who the ISSIP Leaders are? The ISSIP Executive Committee meets every other week to discuss ISSIP community issues, challenges, and opportunities. ISSIP Ambassadors have an annual brainstorming meeting to share best-practice methods of contributing to the ISSIP community and connect it with related communities. ISSIP Strategy Council helps identify the annual “hot topics” for ISSIP Discovery Summit online events. Feel free to send a LinkedIn connection request to ISSIP Leaders with information about how you found out about ISSIP, and your interest in lifelong learning for T-shaped service-innovation-professional development.

Thank-you, ISSIP Events Team

info@issip.org