Zhouying JIN, Lin REN,China Financial & Economic Publishing House, Beijing, 2004
Foreword
Since the third industrial revolutions in the 1980s, the world has turned from the era of product economy, which takes the product manufacturing and marketing as the core product to the era of the service economy which core is to provide intellectual service. Simultaneously, connotation of service industry and its covered domain are also changing enormously. In China, along with the deepening of the opening and reform, opening of the services industry is being accelerated, service industry has become a new point of growth in China's economy, the main source of increasing employment, and a new round of the hotspot of consumption as well as the new focus of foreign investment. In particular, after China's entrance into the WTO, the opening of the service industry has brought more opportunities and greater challenges to China's economic development.
But for a long time, though people enjoy a variety of services everywhere, they don’t know what the service is; despite the added value created by service industry in the world occupies more than 60% of GDP, the service sector however still is considered as "subsidiary department or the catalyst" for the development of the primary and secondary industry. This is mainly because of the lack of study on service essence, and thinking that the service is not the technology, or service industry has not "the core technology".
The backward ideas to service industry and the erroneous awareness have caused in deviation of the system, the institution and the policy, led many areas of service industry still to be in the condition of state monopoly & government regulation, and formed bottleneck of service industry development. The behindhand situation of service sector has already become the restriction factor constraining economic growth in China. And more worrying fact is that the understandings of most of people about the modern service industry still remain in the aspect of modern financial services, insurance, information services, and modern circulation and so on. Now, it is the order of the day to implement marketization, industrialization & socialization of the service industry, and develop service economy.
This book was published as the second series of soft technology research. The first series of soft technology research, "Soft Technology---The Essence & Space of Innovation", was published by Xinhua Publishing House in January 2002, and the English version of this book will also publish in U.K. soon. The Chinese scholar’s articles related soft technology have already published in USA, Japan, France, U.K. and etc.; the terms, such as soft technology, soft environment, soft control, soft power, soft factor and so on, are widely quoted by the scholar, the government officials and the media in many countries; some relevant overseas research organizations also participated in multiform collaboration one after the other; the research & exchange related soft technology on the Internet are even more active. Certainly, the theory of soft technology rests on the stage of ground breaking, and soft technology study is still a new ground which opens up before us.
In this book, the author discusses the essence of service and service innovation from the point of view of soft technology, defines the service as the process technology, so that many new questions of services economy can be interpret theoretically, including the standard of service method and the intellectual property. And the systematic concept of service innovation established according to the innovation framework in a broad sense, serves to provide a rationale for studying & solving systematically the environmental issues which inspire with service innovation, for instance policy, standard, law, intellectual property including the patent of business method in service domain, and promote further the service innovation. At the same time, it has proposed practical approach & methodology dealing with how to enhance the competitiveness of China’s service industry, build a new point of economic growth, create more employment opportunities.
In order to probe further into service innovation, this book carried through case studies taking science & technology consortium as an example, which is one of the important main body of innovation in public society. Therefore, chapter 6 is added to conduce specially studies on social resources, social market and the social industry, to serve to provide the basis for chapter 7 to identify the correct position & effect of China's science & technology consortium. It should be intelligent main body of service innovation & high quality social resources in the service economy. It provides a theoretical basis not only for our in-depth reform of all kinds of social organizations and groups, but also serves valuable cases to service innovation activities of each main body of innovation.
According to the author’s practices and experiences, the main readers might come from several levels: First are leaders & management staffs of enterprises, who are interested in increasing added value of their business through service innovation; second are those entrepreneurs, especially SMEs, who concern about how to grasp the opportunity to establish a business by service innovation and social market arena, but not to simply seek a "high-tech"; third are leaders & management staffs of the service industry, who recognize the nature and mission of their sector and will consciously carry through service innovation; Fourth are government officials and industrial managers, who willing to change their thinking, create a suitable soft environment for developing service industry & social industry, and implement consciously institutional innovation; fifth are social organizations and sociogroups, particularly science & technology consortium, which can comprehend the basis of their structural reform & functional orientation with this book, and improve service efficiency; Sixth are the experts & scholars who concern with service economy and social industry, it provides object & target to further study and exploitation; seventh are the students who study business administration and can serve it as a reference book.
It’s just a beginning for the systematic research on service and service innovation as well as the social resources, and this book carried through the initial exploration, but there are many problems are waiting for further study. Therefore, there are certainly many shortcomings in this book, and hope readers can criticize and provide new idea. The author hopes that those entrepreneurs, scholars, social activists, government officials and managers who are interested in creation, innovation, pioneering, jointly participate in the research on service innovation and the practices in China.
Zhouying JIN, March 2004
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Service & Service Innovation
Chapter Two: Methodology and Approach of Service Innovation
Chapter Three: The Classification of Service Industry and Service Innovation
Chapter Four: The Status Quo and Problem of China’s Service Industry
Chapter Five: Key Issues Affecting Development of Service Economy
Chapter Six: Social Resources and Social Industry
Chapter Seven: Science and Technology Consortium in China
Chapter Eight: Reshaping Science and Technology Consortium of China
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