Chapter 4

Designing Organizations for Specialization and Integration: Modular Business Architecture

If we have 17 million customers, we should have 17 million stores.1

—Jeff Bezos (CEO, Amazon)

Service systems are highly dynamic. The providers, driving to improve their value proposition and offer the best possible experience to the customers, are constantly seeking to upgrade and will substitute one vendor for another if there is the possibility of a service improvement. The customers, similarly driven to seek a better service experience, will switch from one provider to another if there is a service improvement.

At the same time, service systems are becoming more open to competition. Global communications networks, cloud computing, and open ...

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