Service Thinking

Chapter 5

Glo-Mo-So Scalable Platforms

For technology to create the most leverage in services, it can’t support only industrial solutions—it has to support services solutions.

—John Arthur Ricketts

“Does it scale?”

That’s the question Nilofer Merchant, author of 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era, reports CEOs ask when she talks about the “social era” of business—her inclusive term for many of the transformative elements of Service Thinking.1

The question reveals the mental barriers to Service Thinking rooted in manufacturing and product-centric paradigms. Large scale became an end itself (“bigger is better”). Viewed as a rich source of competitive advantage, scale could bring efficiency via the experience curve, ...