How might service design realize change in legacy organizations? This chapter discusses this question by linking service design research with literature on legacy organizations, which are characterized by highly regulated and well-established constellations of actors, resources and structures. Illustrative examples of service design approaches from healthcare and legal services show that tapping into agency at the individual level is important to enable and drive collective change. In this context, the role of service design is to establish an open and safe environment for actors to unpack underlying assumptions and experiment with new ways of working that can catalyze larger-scale change.

While service design has been highlighted as a promising approach for driving innovation, there are often struggles in realizing lasting change in practice. The issues with long-term implementation reveal a reductionist view of service design that ignores the institutional arrangements and other interdependencies that influence design efforts within multi-actor service systems. The purpose of this article is to build a systemic understanding of service design to inform actors' efforts aimed at intentional, long-term change in service systems. To achieve this aim, we inform the conceptual building blocks of service design by applying service-dominant logic's service ecosystems perspective. Through this process, we develop four core propositions and a multilevel process model ofservice ecosystem design.The conceptualization of service ecosystem design advances service design theory by illuminating previously taken for granted aspects; explaining how intentional, long-term change emerges; and expanding the scope of service design beyond projects. Furthermore, this research offers a foundation for future research on service design that involves extending the systemic conceptualization of service design, conducting more holistic empirical investigations, and developing practical methods and approaches for the embedded, collective processes of designing.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide an interdisciplinary framework bridging service design and social entrepreneurship with transformative service research (TSR) to create greater synergetic effects to advance wellbeing and drive social impact. Design/methodology/approach This research provides an interdisciplinary review and synthesis of literature to establish a basis for a conceptual framework advancing human wellbeing and driving social impact. Findings The overarching framework created incorporates various concepts, methods and tools across the three research domains. At the core of the framework is the ultimate goal of multilevel wellbeing and social impact. The core is subsequently supported by established social entrepreneurship concepts and strategies: prosocial motivation, hybrid identity, social bricolage, entrepreneurial thinking, community engagement, business model design and innovative delivery. The implementation of these concepts could benefit from the methods and tools used in service design, such as: design probes, service blueprints, appreciative inquiry, contextual interviews, actor maps, sustainable business model canvas and service prototyping. Originality/value By bridging literature in TSR, service design and social entrepreneurship, this paper provides service managers with a framework to guide scalable systemic solutions for service organizations interested in advancing human wellbeing and driving social impact.

Innovation in healthcare requires changing the institutional arrangements or whatare often referred to as “the rules of the game.” Such a change demands that actorsdo institutional work—intentionally creating, disrupting, and maintaining theentrenched ways of operating within the system. This chapter explores how servicedesign practices contribute to changing the rules of the game in healthcare byintegrating research on service design and institutional work. Based on a literaturereview, five characteristics of service design practices—multidisciplinary, experiential, participatory, experimental, and reflective—are highlighted and linkedto the antecedents of institutional work. Illustrative examples of service designprojects from Experio Lab, an embedded service design group in the Swedishhealthcare system, are used to contextualize the findings. In doing so, this chapterprovides a clear rationale for how service design practices enable innovation inhealthcare and offer insights for healthcare practitioners interested in workingtoward institutional change through service design.

There is growing interest in service design to support transformation in mental healthcare. Early research in this area has shown some promising results, but has also revealed the contentious nature of this work. A better understanding of the complexity of design in mental health is needed to support the development of approaches that are appropriate for this context. As such, the aim of this paper is to examine areas of contention and related strategies employed when designing for mental health transformation. To realize this aim, a qualitative multiple case study of ten service design initiatives in mental health contexts was conducted. The analysis revealed five interconnected contentious issues: organizational constraints; ensuring meaningful participation; culture clashes; power dynamics; and systems approaches. These contentious issues are detailed and related strategies from various cases are put forward, providing a rich foundation for the ongoing development of service design approaches in mental health.

This thesis explores and advances the evolving understanding of service design in service research. The study problematizes the prevailing view of service design as the design of service offerings to improve customer experiences. My work shows that this popular narrative does not adequately account for the situated struggles of actors when doing service design. As such, a more processual, embedded, systemic, and embodied perspective of service design is needed. In response, this thesis draws from the service ecosystems perspective of service-dominant logic, integrating insights from institutional theory, systems theory and design theory, to examine service design from an alternative perspective. This inquiry is supported through empirical inputs from a para-ethnographic study of Experio Lab in Sweden, a qualitative analysis of service design methods, and ‘research through design’ experiments. Through systematically combining these empirical and theoretical inputs, this work challenges the underlying assumptions about service design. Based on the development of alternative assumptions, this thesis builds an extended understanding of service design that unabashedly situates actors and their bodies within the dynamic service ecosystems they seek to design. Through this study, I formulate an extended understanding of service design that is referred to as service ecosystem design. Service ecosystem design is defined as the intentional and collective shaping of social structures, and their physical enactments, in order to facilitate the emergence of cocreated value-in-context. This thesis presents a process model for service ecosystem design that reframes service design from an iterative, linear, and phased process, to an embedded and ongoing feedback loop. This feedback loop involves the processes of reflexivity, through which actors build awareness of existing social structures, and reformation, through which actors’ intentionally reshape social structures toward preferred value cocreation configurations. Based on this alternative view of service design, this research offers a set of design principles and experimental approaches to help practitioners acknowledge and leverage the situated nature of their practice. By extending the understanding of service design, this thesis has implications for broader conversations about design, service, and systems change, and provides a foundation for future research at this intersection.

Service design has been hailed for its ability to drive innovation and transformation. As a result, there are growing investments in service design by organizations, governments, and communities around the globe. However, the popular narrative of successfully crafting new service offerings through service design is not fully reflective of the situated struggles actors face in practice. In response, this study builds an alternative understanding of service design, called “service ecosystem design”, which offers a more systemic and contextual perspective of the service design process. In this view, social structures – the shared and entrenched rules, norms, roles, and beliefs of actors – are seen as the central materials of service design. This research offers a process model for how actors can intentionally shape social structures to create lasting change within service systems. In addition, it offers design principles and experimental approaches for bringing this process to life.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze how service design practices reshape mental models to enable innovation. Mental models are actors’ assumptions and beliefs that guide their behavior and interpretation of their environment. Design/methodology/approach: This paper offers a conceptual framework for innovation in service ecosystems through service design that connects the macro view of innovation as changing institutional arrangements with the micro view of innovation as reshaping actors’ mental models. Furthermore, through an 18-month ethnographic study of service design practices in the context of healthcare, how service design practices reshape mental models to enable innovation is investigated. Findings: This research highlights that service design reshapes mental models through the practices of sensing surprise, perceiving multiples and embodying alternatives. This paper delineates the enabling conditions for these practices to occur, such as coaching, diverse participation and supportive physical materials. Research limitations/implications: This study brings forward the underappreciated role of actors’ mental models in innovation. It highlights that innovation in service ecosystems is not simply about actors making changes to their external context but also actors shifting their own assumptions and beliefs. Practical implications: This paper offers insights for service managers and service designers interested in supporting innovation on how to catalyze shifts in actors’ mental models by creating the conditions for specific service design practices. Originality/value: This paper is the first to shed light on the central role of actors’ mental models in innovation and identify the service design practices that reshape mental models.

Within the discourse connecting design and innovation, there has been a growing emphasis on the importance of cognitive processes in relation to design methods. However, the over-emphasis on cognition fails to clearly identify the triggers of change necessary for service innovation. In response, this article draws on classic American pragmatism and service-dominant logic to highlight the underappreciated role of actors' bodily experiences when using design methods for service innovation. The authors of this paper posit that design methods stage aesthetic disruption, a sensory experience that challenges actors' existing assumptions. In doing so, the use of design methods can lead to destabilizing the habitual action of participating actors, helping them to break free of existing institutions and contribute to service innovation.

Amid all the excitement about transforming social systems through design, there remains a lack of understanding about what design can uniquely offer to support this change. This conceptual paper contributes to the discussion by integrating research on design and systems thinking to develop the concept of aesthetic disruption, highlighting its connection to the alteration of mental models in social systems. With support from empirical illustrations of aesthetic disruption in the context of healthcare, we identify four core components of designing for aesthetic disruption: engagement of the senses, experience of dissensus, exposed assumptions, and reflexive actors. In doing so, we bring aesthetic knowledge to the fore of what design can contribute to social systems transformation and lay the foundation for further research and practice related to aesthetic disruption.