There are many people who contributed their support in time, talents, intellectual property, and encouragement to this project, whom we wish to acknowledge.
Foremost are Jim Spohrer and Jorge Sanz from IBM who championed and guided us with their generous support in time, expertise in business modeling for different industries, operational strategy tools, componentized business architecture, and advice. They have dedicated their career focus to Service Science and Component Business Modeling and we are honored that they enabled us to write this book.
We have a special thanks to Haluk Demirkan, who both championed and edited our work, and to Yassi Moghaddam who has helped to enable Service Thinking to be reviewed through ISSIP (International Society for Service Innovation Professionals).
In addition, we want to acknowledge other IBMers who supported us with their insights: Linda Sanford, Daryl Pereira, Sara Moulton Reger, and Wendy Murphy.
We are grateful to those at Hult International Business School, who enabled us to pilot the Service Thinking program in the MBA program. Our thanks to: Steve Hodges, Nick van der Walt, Luis Umana Timms, Larry Louie, Marty Manley, and Marjan Mohsenin.
Special thanks to those whom we profiled that exemplify Service Thinking in their enterprises: Rajat Paharia, Dr. Sam Pejham, Steve Susskind, Ben Chun, and Mike Saperstein.
Thanks to our assistant Barkha Shah and the students at Hult International Business School who have helped us to learn about Service Thinking through teaching them.