After all, the service sector (as traditionally measured) has grown to be the largest share of gross domestic product and employment for all major industrialized countries. Now, service science has grown into a global initiative involving hundreds of organizations and thousands of people who have begun to create service innovation roadmaps and to invest in expanding the body of knowledge about service systems and networks.

But exactly what counts as service science?

Simply put,  service science aims to explain and improve interactions in which multiple entities work together to achieve win-win outcomes or mutual benefits.

As an emerging academic discipline, service science is not a merger of two disciplines, but a quest for a holistic integrative discipline. What could possibly integrate diverse disciplines such as economics and law, marketing, operations research, management sciences, industrial and systems engineering, computer science, management of information systems, social sciences, management of technology and innovation, financial engineering, and more? Therefore, some will say that there is too much here for a single coherent discipline, but Jim Spohrer and Paul Maglio, in the paper "Service Science: Toward a Smarter Planet" show that there is in fact a coherent integration using a systems approach and identifying ten foundational concepts..