Since coming back from holiday, I was thrown back in at the deep end doing a project which was very heavily sold to the client as it would bring them the benefits of our, ‘service design philosophy’. Now I appreciate that company processes evolve and change, so saying a company has a philosophy is a bit like taking a snap shot of the way seren works rather than actually having a documented formal process. But it would be good to have it more clearly articulated. If seren has a ‘service design philosophy’ can we judge our deliverables against it?

I am very intrigued by how Seren thinks they develop this ‘philosophy’ and this great post about design as learning got me thinking about it again.

Be warned its a very mumbo jumbo article containng such classic sentences as, “However, the Kaiser/IDEO model, which is isomorphic to the analysis-synthesis bridge model, includes a loop. And Kumar’s innovation model, which is also isomorphic, does explicitly include a spiral!” Can you imagine a spiral my how they laughed at that one.

But I quite like this process
“Socialization (tacit to tacit) “is the process of converting new tacit knowledge through shared experiences in day-to-day social interaction.”
Externalization (tacit to explicit) is a process whereby “tacit knowledge is articulated into explicit knowledge…so that it can be shared by others to become the basis of new knowledge.”
Combination (explicit to explicit) is a process whereby “explicit knowledge is collected from inside or outside the organization and then combined, edited, or processed to form more complex and systematic explicit knowledge…The new explicit knowledge is then disseminated among the members of the organization.”
Internalization (explicit to tacit) is a process whereby “explicit knowledge created and shared throughout an organization is then converted into tacit knowledge by individuals…This stage can be understood as praxis, where knowledge is applied and used in practical situations and becomes the base for new routines.”

So I think we do work using service design tools ‘socialization’,we discuss that work with our colleagues ‘externalization’, because we a adaptable and flexible we create lots of new ideas, ‘combination’ but we don’t really then ‘internalize’ it. Could the seren ‘service design philosophy’ be ‘applied and used in practical situations and becomes the base for new routines’?