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The purpose of this paper is to highlight how systems thinking contributes to decision making in uncertain contexts that are characteristic of service systems. Based on the assumption that service systems face complex conditions, the paper posits that systems thinking may support the understanding of key issues in service management.

This paper proposes an interpretation of complexity in the context of service systems, which highlights the perspective change that occurs when a systems approach is adopted. The offered conceptual perspective is then brought to an operational level, in spite of the complexity of the decisions driving a viable system, by modelling a service system as a network of agents, resources, processes and decisions through the use of fuzzy logic. The paper reviews service management research streams, and takes a deeper look at the concepts of service systems and complex service systems. The paper then proceeds to discuss how systems thinking contributes to service management by proposing a systems interpretation of complexity.

Service management theories and models may be enhanced by integrating prevailing approaches, based on a quantitative and mechanistic view of service systems dynamics, with systems thinking‐based meta‐models that can be used in better understanding service exchanges. The findings of the paper also show how the integration of an engineering approach can be insightful to the understanding of service systems; adopting a Viable Systems Approach (VSA) as a meta‐model can be useful in fully comprehending market behaviour in uncertain conditions.

The originality of this paper lies in exploring the contribution of systems thinking, in particular of the Viable Systems Approach (VSA), to service management and decision making.

This work provides validation of a model for successful commercialisation of innovative products for residential construction. The development of the model is motivated by the persistence of failed commercialisations due to inadequate business plans. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

The current paper validates the model with data from case studies of 15 manufacturers of recently commercialised innovative residential‐construction products. The research team interpreted the interview data and correlated this data with the model. The correlations illuminate critical steps within the commercialisation process; perceptions of the less important steps; decisions and resulting actions that support commercialisation, accelerators and barriers of commercialisation; and prototypical commercialisation processes.

A total of 15 case studies of successfully commercialised products provide empirical support for the commercialisation model that was developed from literature review and previous surveys.

The research is based on content analysis of in‐depth interviews from 15 case studies, a methodology that yields a small number of general conclusions from a large data set. More case studies are needed to expand the implications presented in this work. Conclusions drawn from the data have important implications for establishing a normative description of the process of transforming an invention into a commercialised innovation in residential construction.

The commercialisation findings presented here could benefit innovators and adopters of construction products. The research indicates best practices, key accelerators and key barriers to the commercialisation of products in the residential‐construction industry.

This work presents the second phase of development of a domain‐specific commercialisation model for innovative residential‐construction products. This commercialisation model serves as a roadmap to entrepreneurs, which avoids the most common pitfalls along the path of commercialisation.

This paper aims to report on data from case studies of development process, and a survey of use patterns over ten years, for 13 highly innovative products. While the paper does not claim concurrent commercialization (CC) as a universal solution, it aims to highlight significant correlates between management best practice, concurrent commercialization and builder use rates for these 13 highly innovative products in the USA residential construction industry.

To study the effect of CC on new‐product adoption rates by installers, the authors assembled data from the National Association of Home Builders' (NAHB) Builders' Practices Survey (BPS) for the years 1996 through 2005. The data collection was executed in three phases. Best practices were collected from literature. Explanatory variables regarding best practice and presence of CC were collected and measured through case studies. The measure of market penetration, based on the concept of innovativeness, was obtained from the BPS survey data.

Data analysis of 13 highly innovative products indicates that CC is consistent with accepted best practice in product development. These products suggest that some organizations might contain 100 percent CC with varying degrees of best practice management ideals, and also include equilibrium.

The extent to which products, with varying CC percentage, are affected by individual steps within CC is a direction for future research. The authors also did not have the ability to look at the entry year for other products strongly rooted in CC; there could be other explanations for a product entering the market strongly.

CC is essentially directed at designing a commercialization process, as opposed to designing a product, which benefits the product development from exposure to all members along the construction supply chain. CC, drawing on concurrent engineering, expands the definition of the market to include all supply‐chain participants, not just the installers and advocates the establishment of a complete supply chain, possible only if every member of the chain foresees net benefits to joining. In strengthening the commercialization process, the product might experience better probability of success.

The paper places reason upon product failure, in the residential construction industry, through further investigation of sound commercialization process.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a commercialization framework that outlines phases and functional areas for technical and business practices in getting innovative products to market. The development of this framework was motivated by a history of failures of entrepreneurial business ventures in the commercialization of construction products.

This paper presents Phase 1 of commercialization research efforts, which includes a definition of innovation and commercialization for the residential construction industry; a review of literature related to generic commercialization models; and construction of a new commercialization framework for innovative construction products. This paper also introduces Phase 2 of this research, which includes qualitative and quantitative knowledge capture from construction industry experts; and the development of a domain‐specific commercialization model for the residential industry based on these inputs to reflect the unique challenges of construction products.

This paper presents a generic commercialization framework as a basis for interpreting various data from product interviews and case study literature. These data were used to further specify the framework. This paper presents an example of the many construction products reviewed in this research and its possible impact on the framework.

The generic commercialization model presented here could benefit innovators of construction products. The research indicates the importance of key steps in the commercialization of these kinds of products.

Since, no model captured the specific issues of commercializing residential construction products, this paper introduces a basis for one. In creating a generic commercialization framework, this paper facilitates entrepreneurial product commercialization for the construction industry.

The aim of this paper is to present part of continuing research on the challenges of entrepreneurial business ventures to commercialize innovative construction products in the residential construction industry.

The authors use workshop and survey data on the role of the developer/builder to further develop the domain‐specific commercialization model for residential construction products. The authors propose a cross‐functional system to better facilitate innovation.

Successful concurrent commercialization requires risk sharing among all members of a product's supply chain. The authors advocate concurrent management in commercialization, which requires information sharing and knowledge transfer among supply‐chain members early in a commercialization project and a special form of concurrent engineering for construction products, which is called concurrent commercialization (CC).

The research indicates that addressing the developer/builder risk along the entire supply chain is one key determinant to a successful commercialization project. It also indicates that commercialization involves more than just technical product design; commercialization cuts across all functional areas.

The research data, along with the review of the literature on product innovation and commercialization, lead one to advocate concurrent engineering for construction products termed concurrent commercialization (CC). Since the research clearly indicates that the developer/builder is the most reluctant customer in the supply chain, CC applied to construction products emphasizes the influence of mitigating developer/builder risks in the design of a commercialization project.

The purpose of this study is use a bibliometric analysis to explore the relational nature of knowledge creation in WFM in operations. Companies live under constant pressure to find the best ways to plan their workforce, and the workforce emangement (WFM) is one of the biggest challenges faced by managers. Relevant research on WFM in operations has been published in a several range of journals that vary in their scope and readership, and thus the academic contribution to the topic remains largely fragmented.

To address this gap, this review aims to map research on WFM in operations to understand where it comes from and where it is going and, therefore, provides opportunities for future work. This study combined two bibliometric approaches with manual document coding to examine the literature corpus of WFM in operations to draw a holistic picture of its different aspects.

Content and thematic analysis of the seminal studies resulted in the extraction of three key research themes: workforce cross-training, planning workforce mixed methods and individual workforce characteristics. The findings of this study further highlight the gaps in the WFM in operations literature and raise some research questions that warrant further academic investigation in the future.

Likewise, this study has important implications for practitioners who are likely to benefit from a holistic understanding of the different aspects of WFM in operations.