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”.
Just like a grape-centered smart service system to co-create value, we are going to have a worker-centered smart service system to co-create value, too.
