The S-D Logic of Workers as Wine Grapes
Let’s start with a practical definition of service-dominant logic: S-D logic is a perspective — a lens through which you can design and build things to address demand-side marketplaces made up of buyers and sellers (or consumers and producers, if you like) and supply-side networks made up of, well, suppliers.
When you look at marketing and innovation in the human capital resource (HCR) management space through a service-dominant lens, workers look different:
- Workers aren’t profiled by occupation or segmented around demographics or psychographics, they are profiled and addressed by how they struggle differently in their pursuit of well-being.
- Worker needs aren’t vague, latent and unknowable, they are the metrics they use to measure success during their pursuit of well-being.
- The unit of analysis is no longer a noun that is the right core value unit but rather a verb that is a core interaction being done right.
Then, using that lens, a smart service system begins to emerge of which the condensed basic tenets are:
- A “service” is a competency to create value.
- A “service system” is a configuration of entities that render competencies that lead to positive outcomes for market participants.
- A “smart” system amplifies or augments human ability to identify, learn, adapt, monitor and make decisions.
To help understand how a smart service system can work in the human capital space, consider how wine is made. There’s the:
- Universe as architect enabling interactions.
- Earth making it easier to perform distributed and repeatable operations.
- Leaves triggering delivery of nutrients.
- Vines delivering nutrients to grapes in their pursuit of well-being.
- Vineyards governing interactions — actions, reactions, and transactions.
- Grapes determining the quality of wine.
- Wine that is acted upon to co-create value.
Likewise, in the human capital space, we need the:
- Platform as the architect enabling interactions.
- Platform making it easier to perform distributed and repeatable operations.
- Agent triggering delivery of information to workers.
- Code delivering information to workers in their pursuit of well-being.
- Platform providers governing interactions — actions, reactions, and transactions.
- Workers determining the quality of product.
- Product that is acted upon to co-create value.
So, basic tenets of a smart service system in the human capital space are summarized as follows:
- Where employer-employee relationship is the “service” to create value.
- Where higher education and training providers, recruiting and placement firms, intermediaries, regulators, etc. render competencies that lead to positive outcomes for employers, workers, and learners is the “service system”.
- Where NLP, ML, and AI amplify and augment employer, worker, and learner ability to identify, learn, adapt, monitor and make decisions is “smart”.
Yes, we are going to have a worker-centered smart service system to co-create value. And, yes, we are going to have a grape-centered smart service system to co-create value, too.