Service Ecosystem Design

1. Overview

Service Ecosystem Design is a framework for intentionally shaping complex service systems to foster long-term, sustainable change. It moves beyond traditional service design, which often focuses on isolated touchpoints and customer journeys, to address the underlying social structures and institutional arrangements that govern how value is co-created by a multitude of actors. The pattern is defined as the intentional shaping of institutional arrangements and their physical enactments by actor collectives through reflexivity and reformation to facilitate the emergence of desired value cocreation forms (Vink et al., 2021).

This approach matters because it provides a way to tackle ‘wicked problems’ in complex systems like healthcare, public services, and urban development, where traditional, linear design processes often fail to create lasting impact. By focusing on the ‘rules of the game’—the shared norms, beliefs, and power structures—it enables a more systemic and sustainable form of innovation. The origin of Service Ecosystem Design lies in the academic evolution of service design theory, particularly through the integration of the service-dominant (S-D) logic and its service ecosystems perspective. It was formally conceptualized by Josina Vink and colleagues in their 2021 article in the Journal of Service Research, building on decades of work that shifted the focus from designing services as products to designing for the co-creation of value within complex adaptive systems.

2. Core Principles

Service Ecosystem Design is guided by a set of principles that shift the focus from traditional, linear design to a more systemic, emergent, and participatory approach.

1. Embrace Emergence and Unpredictability. The outcomes of designing in a complex adaptive system are never fully controllable or predictable. Value is co-created and emerges from the dynamic interactions of diverse actors. This principle requires designers to act more as facilitators and stewards of the ecosystem, guiding its evolution rather than trying to engineer a predetermined outcome. The goal is to create enabling conditions for desired forms of value co-creation to emerge, while remaining adaptive to unexpected developments.

2. Design with Institutional Arrangements. The core materials of Service Ecosystem Design are not just touchpoints and interfaces, but the invisible, enduring “rules of the game”: the institutional arrangements. These include regulative (rules, laws), normative (roles, norms), and cultural-cognitive (beliefs, shared assumptions) structures. Design interventions focus on making these arrangements visible and intentionally shaping them and their physical enactments (e.g., artifacts, symbols, interactions) to enable new patterns of value co-creation.

3. Foster a Cycle of Reflexivity and Reformation. Lasting change happens through a continuous feedback loop of ‘seeing’ and ‘moving’ the system. Reflexivity is the process of becoming aware of the existing, often taken-for-granted, institutional arrangements that shape behavior. This awareness is often triggered by experiencing institutional complexity or through specific, staged interventions. Reformation is the intentional work of creating, disrupting, or maintaining those institutional arrangements to reshape the ecosystem. This is an ongoing, embedded process, not a one-off project.

4. Cultivate Collective Designing. Everyone designs. Service ecosystem design is not the domain of a few expert designers but a collective endeavor involving all actors within the system. This includes customers, employees, partners, regulators, and even competitors. The process acknowledges that multiple, often conflicting, design processes are always at play. The role of the designer is to understand these dynamics and facilitate a more conscious and collaborative process of collective designing, empowering all actors to become intentional shapers of their shared ecosystem.

3. Key Practices

Implementing Service Ecosystem Design involves a set of practices aimed at making the invisible visible and intentionally shaping the social structures of a system. These practices are iterative and often conducted in parallel.

1. Map the Ecosystem and its Institutions. The first step is to develop a deep understanding of the system. This goes beyond typical stakeholder mapping to visualize the entire network of actors and, crucially, to uncover the institutional arrangements that govern their interactions. This involves identifying the formal and informal rules, norms, roles, and shared beliefs that are currently in place. Tools like ecosystem mapping, institutional analysis, and ethnographic research are essential here.

2. Stage Experiences for Reflexivity. To change a system, its actors must first become aware of the structures that hold it in place. This practice involves creating experiences that help stakeholders see the system from new perspectives and question their taken-for-granted assumptions. This can be achieved through immersive research, role-playing simulations, co-creative workshops where diverse actors share stories, or by exposing actors to anomalies and contradictions within the system.

3. Prototype New Institutional Arrangements. Prototyping in this context is not just about testing new touchpoints, but about experimenting with new social structures. This could involve piloting a new decision-making process in a team, trying out a new role or responsibility, or testing a new set of rules for collaboration between organizations. These prototypes are small-scale experiments designed to learn about the potential impacts of institutional change.

4. Leverage Sociomaterial Configurations. Institutional arrangements are enacted and reinforced through physical and digital artifacts, spaces, and interactions. This practice involves intentionally designing and altering these sociomaterial configurations to disrupt old patterns and encourage new ones. This can include changing the layout of a physical space, redesigning a digital platform to promote different interactions, or introducing new language and symbols that represent a desired future state.

5. Facilitate Collective and Emergent Strategy. The designer’s role shifts from being an expert solution-provider to a facilitator of a collective process. This involves creating and holding spaces for diverse actors to come together, negotiate their interests, and co-create their desired future. It requires skills in facilitation, conflict resolution, and systems thinking. The strategy is not a fixed plan but an emergent direction that is continuously adapted based on feedback from the ecosystem.

6. Work Across Micro, Meso, and Macro Levels. Change must be addressed at multiple levels simultaneously. A micro-level intervention (e.g., changing a team’s daily meeting format) must be connected to meso-level changes (e.g., new departmental policies) and aligned with macro-level shifts (e.g., advocating for new industry regulations or public policies). This practice requires actors to think and act systemically, understanding the nested nature of service ecosystems.

4. Application Context

Service Ecosystem Design is most effective when dealing with complex challenges that cannot be solved by a single organization or through simple product/service innovation. It is a pattern for systemic change.

Best Used For:

• Transforming Public Services: Reimagining systems like healthcare, education, and social services to be more human-centered, preventative, and resilient. For example, shifting from a treatment-focused healthcare system to one that co-creates well-being with citizens.
• Developing Multi-Sided Platforms and Markets: Creating the conditions for a successful Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) ecosystem, a circular economy marketplace, or a peer-to-peer energy trading platform, where value is created by the interactions of many different actors.
• Driving Regional or Urban Development: Tackling complex urban challenges like affordable housing, sustainable transportation, or local food systems by aligning the efforts of public agencies, private companies, non-profits, and residents.
• Corporate or Industry-Wide Transformation: When a company or an entire industry needs to fundamentally change its business model and the underlying logic of how it creates value, such as shifting from a product-centric to a service-centric logic.
• Cross-Sector Social Innovation: Addressing ‘wicked problems’ like climate change, poverty, or public health crises that require deep collaboration between government, business, and civil society.

Not Suitable For:

• Simple, Well-Defined Problems: When the problem and solution are clear, and the challenge can be addressed by a single team or organization, this pattern is overkill. Traditional service design or product management is more appropriate.
• Projects Requiring Quick, Predictable ROI: The process is emergent and focuses on long-term, systemic change. It is not a good fit for projects that demand immediate, easily quantifiable financial returns.
• Environments with Zero Appetite for Change: The pattern requires a willingness from at least some key actors to question the status quo and engage in a process of transformation. It cannot be imposed on a completely resistant system.

Scale: Multi-Organization / Ecosystem

Domains: Healthcare, Public Sector, Urban Planning, Mobility, Circular Economy, Technology Platforms, Social Innovation

5. Implementation

Implementing Service Ecosystem Design is a long-term journey that requires patience, persistence, and a different set of skills than traditional design projects.

Prerequisites:

• A Compelling Reason for Change: There must be a shared recognition among at least a core group of stakeholders that the current system is failing or that a significant new opportunity exists which cannot be captured by working in the old ways.
• A Sponsor or Convener: A credible and neutral actor is often needed to initiate the process, bring diverse stakeholders to the table, and provide the initial resources to get started.
• Systems Leadership Skills: The core team needs skills in systems thinking, facilitation, stakeholder engagement, and navigating complexity and ambiguity.
• Long-Term Commitment: All participants must understand that this is not a short-term project with a defined endpoint, but an ongoing process of co-evolution.

Getting Started:

1. Form a Core Group and Define the Focal System: Start with a small, diverse group of passionate and influential stakeholders. Together, define the boundaries of the service ecosystem you want to transform and articulate a shared intention or a guiding question.
2. Conduct an Institutional Analysis: Begin the process of reflexivity by mapping the ecosystem’s actors and the institutional arrangements that govern their interactions. Use ethnographic methods, interviews, and workshops to uncover the hidden rules, norms, and beliefs.
3. Identify a ‘Wedge’ for Change: Find a concrete, tangible starting point where there is energy for change. This could be a specific problem that is frustrating many actors, or a small-scale experiment that can be prototyped relatively easily. This provides a focus for the initial reformation work.
4. Launch a Prototyping Cycle: Start experimenting with new institutional arrangements at a small scale. This could be a new type of meeting, a new collaborative role, or a new information-sharing platform. The goal is to learn and iterate, not to find the perfect solution immediately.
5. Establish a Rhythm for Collective Reflection: Create regular opportunities for the wider group of stakeholders to come together, make sense of what is being learned through the prototypes, and collectively decide on the next steps. This builds the capacity for collective designing.

Common Challenges:

• Institutional Inertia: The existing system will resist change. Powerful actors may have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Overcoming this requires building a broad coalition for change and demonstrating the value of the new approach through successful prototypes.
• Lack of Trust Between Stakeholders: A history of competition or conflict can make collaboration difficult. Building trust requires creating safe spaces for dialogue, establishing shared goals, and delivering on small promises.
• Difficulty in Measuring Progress: The impact of this work is often indirect, emergent, and long-term, which can be difficult to measure with traditional KPIs. It’s important to develop a more holistic set of metrics that track changes in the system’s capacity for collaboration, learning, and adaptation.
• Designer Role Confusion: Designers trained in traditional methods may struggle with the shift from expert to facilitator. This requires a conscious effort to unlearn old habits and embrace a more humble, coaching-oriented stance.

Success Factors:

• Distributed Leadership: Change is not driven by a single leader, but by a network of champions at all levels of the ecosystem.
• Patient and Persistent Capital: The work requires funding sources that understand the long-term, emergent nature of systemic change and are willing to invest without demanding immediate, predictable returns.
• A Strong Narrative for Change: A compelling story that explains why the change is necessary and what a better future could look like is essential for mobilizing and aligning diverse actors.
• Continuous Learning and Adaptation: The process must be designed for learning. This means creating tight feedback loops, being willing to fail and learn from mistakes, and continuously adapting the strategy based on what is emerging from the system.

6. Evidence & Impact

As an emerging academic framework, large-scale, comprehensively documented case studies of Service Ecosystem Design are still developing. However, the principles of the pattern can be seen in action in numerous complex, multi-stakeholder innovation efforts.

Notable Adopters: While organizations may not explicitly use the term “Service Ecosystem Design,” the approach is evident in the work of:

• The Finnish Innovation Fund, Sitra: A key player in catalyzing the world’s first Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) ecosystem in Helsinki. They acted as a neutral convener, funding early experiments and bringing together public transport authorities, private mobility providers, and technology companies to co-create a new market.
• The UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS): In its mission to make government services “simpler, clearer, faster,” GDS has had to work across departmental silos, changing not just technology but the institutional arrangements around how services are funded, developed, and delivered.
• Experio Lab (Sweden): A national team for patient-oriented service design in Sweden that has worked on numerous projects to shift the healthcare system’s logic from provider-centric to patient-centric, often by redesigning roles, responsibilities, and collaboration patterns.
• The Ellen MacArthur Foundation: While focused on the circular economy, their work is a prime example of ecosystem design. They work to change the institutional arrangements (e.g., business models, material standards, policy) that underpin the linear “take-make-dispose” economy.
• Buurtzorg (Netherlands): A revolutionary home care organization that radically decentralized authority to self-managing teams of nurses. This involved a fundamental reformation of the institutional arrangements of traditional home care, shifting from a logic of efficiency and standardized tasks to one of professional autonomy and holistic patient well-being.

Documented Outcomes:

• Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS): The Helsinki MaaS ecosystem, catalyzed by actors applying these principles, has led to the creation of companies like Whim, which integrates various transport options into a single subscription service. This demonstrates the emergence of a new value proposition that no single actor could have created alone.
• Improved Healthcare Experiences: The work of organizations like Experio Lab has led to documented improvements in patient experience and health outcomes. For example, by co-designing new care pathways with patients and staff, they have been able to reduce wait times, improve coordination between different care providers, and increase patient agency.
• Systemic Policy Change: The process of ecosystem design often reveals the need for policy change. In the MaaS example, the initial experiments highlighted regulatory barriers that needed to be addressed to allow for the legal operation of an integrated mobility service.

Research Support:

• Vink, J., Koskela-Huotari, K., Tronvoll, B., Edvardsson, B., & Wetter-Edman, K. (2021). Service Ecosystem Design: Propositions, Process Model, and Future Research Agenda. Journal of Service Research, 24(2), 168–186. The foundational paper that formally conceptualizes the pattern.
• Flaig, A., Guyader, H., & Ottosson, M. (2025). Design-Oriented stakeholder engagement in service ecosystems. Journal of Business Research, 191, 115255. This study provides a detailed case study of a MaaS ecosystem, analyzing the dynamics of stakeholder engagement and the importance of reflexivity.
• Works on Institutional Work and Service-Dominant Logic: The pattern is built on a rich body of research in institutional theory (e.g., Lawrence & Suddaby) and S-D Logic (e.g., Vargo & Lusch), which provides a strong theoretical underpinning for its principles and evidence of the power of shaping institutional arrangements.

7. Cognitive Era Considerations

The principles of Service Ecosystem Design are particularly relevant in the Cognitive Era, as AI and automation introduce new actors and dynamics into our service ecosystems.

Cognitive Augmentation Potential:

• AI-Powered Ecosystem Intelligence: AI can significantly enhance the practice of reflexivity. Machine learning algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data from across an ecosystem (e.g., transaction data, communication patterns, sensor data) to identify hidden patterns of interaction and reveal the influence of institutional arrangements that might be invisible to human actors alone. This can provide a real-time, dynamic map of the ecosystem’s health and functioning.
• Simulating Institutional Change: AI can be used to model and simulate the potential impacts of proposed changes to institutional arrangements. Before investing heavily in a real-world prototype, designers could use agent-based modeling to explore the likely emergent consequences of a new rule, role, or incentive structure, reducing the risk of unintended negative consequences.
• Automated Institutional Work: Certain aspects of reformation can be automated. For example, smart contracts on a blockchain could enforce new rules for value exchange in a decentralized and transparent manner. AI-powered platforms could facilitate large-scale collective decision-making, helping to align the intentions of thousands or even millions of actors.

Human-Machine Balance:

• What Remains Human: While AI can augment intelligence and automate processes, the core of Service Ecosystem Design remains deeply human. The process of facilitating trust and dialogue between diverse stakeholders, negotiating conflicting values and interests, and making wise judgments about the desired direction of the ecosystem are all tasks that require human empathy, social intelligence, and ethical reasoning. The role of the designer as a facilitator, coach, and steward becomes even more critical.
• The Locus of Agency: A key challenge will be to design human-machine systems where human agency is enhanced, not diminished. The goal is not to create a fully automated ecosystem run by AI, but to use AI as a tool to empower all actors to become more conscious and capable designers of their own systems. This requires a focus on explainable AI (XAI) and participatory approaches to the design of the AI systems themselves.

Evolution Outlook:

• From Staged Reflexivity to Continuous Awareness: In the future, we may move from periodic, workshop-based reflexivity exercises to a state of continuous, real-time ecosystem awareness, enabled by embedded sensors and AI. This could allow for a more fluid and responsive process of reformation.
• The Rise of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs): The principles of Service Ecosystem Design provide a much-needed social and institutional design layer for emerging technologies like DAOs. A DAO is essentially a set of institutional arrangements encoded in software. The success of DAOs will depend on our ability to design them in a way that fosters healthy social dynamics and aligns the interests of their members, a core challenge of this pattern.
• A New Profession of ‘Ecosystem Choreographers’: As our world becomes more interconnected and complex, we will need a new type of designer who is skilled in shaping the context for value co-creation, rather than just designing the artifacts and interactions within it. These ‘ecosystem choreographers’ will be masters of the art and science of Service Ecosystem Design.

8. Commons Alignment Assessment (v2.0)

This assessment evaluates the pattern based on the Commons OS v2.0 framework, which focuses on the pattern’s ability to enable resilient collective value creation.

1. Stakeholder Architecture: The pattern defines Rights and Responsibilities by making “institutional arrangements” the explicit material for design. It promotes “collective designing,” which empowers all actors—including humans, organizations, and by extension, the AI and machines they employ—to reshape the rules of their shared ecosystem. This inherently distributes the right and responsibility to participate in the system’s ongoing evolution, moving beyond a simple user-centric view to a holistic stakeholder architecture.

2. Value Creation Capability: The framework is explicitly designed to enable collective value creation that transcends simple economic output. By focusing on “wicked problems” in domains like healthcare, public services, and the circular economy, it inherently targets the creation of social, ecological, and knowledge value. The emphasis on emergent, co-created outcomes rather than predetermined outputs is central to its philosophy of fostering a resilient system capable of generating diverse forms of value.

3. Resilience & Adaptability: Resilience and adaptability are at the core of this pattern. By embracing emergence and unpredictability, it equips systems to thrive on change. The central loop of “reflexivity” (seeing the system) and “reformation” (adapting its rules) is a direct mechanism for building adaptive capacity, allowing the ecosystem to maintain coherence while evolving in response to internal and external pressures.

4. Ownership Architecture: Service Ecosystem Design reframes ownership away from a focus on assets or equity and towards stewardship of the system itself. Ownership is expressed as the collective right and responsibility to shape the “institutional arrangements”—the rules that govern value creation. This aligns perfectly with a view of ownership as a bundle of rights and responsibilities for the system’s value-creating capability.

5. Design for Autonomy: The pattern is highly compatible with autonomous systems. Its focus on designing the “rules of the game” rather than micromanaging interactions creates a low-coordination-overhead environment where autonomous agents (like DAOs or AI) can effectively participate. The framework’s principles provide a much-needed social and institutional design layer for technologies like DAOs, ensuring they are designed to foster healthy social dynamics.

6. Composability & Interoperability: This pattern is a meta-pattern designed for high composability. It provides a framework for integrating other, more specific patterns (e.g., for governance, value distribution, or technology) into a coherent whole. By focusing on the institutional level, it enables different protocols, business models, and organizational forms to interoperate within a larger value-creation system.

7. Fractal Value Creation: The pattern’s core logic is inherently fractal. The cycle of reflexivity and reformation can be applied at the micro-level of a single team, the meso-level of an organization or platform, and the macro-level of an entire industry or public service sector. This allows the same fundamental value-creation logic to scale across a nested system of systems, from individual interactions to global ecosystems.

Overall Score: 5 (Value Creation Architecture)

Rationale: Service Ecosystem Design provides a complete and robust architecture for enabling resilient, collective value creation. It directly addresses all seven pillars of the v2.0 framework by focusing on the design of the underlying institutional structures that empower all stakeholders to co-create diverse forms of value. It is not merely an enabler but a comprehensive blueprint for building a commons.

Opportunities for Improvement:

• Integrate more explicit guidance on analyzing and rebalancing power dynamics to ensure equitable participation in the “collective designing” process.
• Develop clearer methodologies for measuring the creation of non-economic value (e.g., social, ecological, resilience) to better track the health of the ecosystem.
• Provide more concrete case studies on how to apply the framework to purely digital or AI-native ecosystems, such as DAOs and data commons.

9. Resources & References

Essential Reading:

• Vink, J., Koskela-Huotari, K., Tronvoll, B., Edvardsson, B., & Wetter-Edman, K. (2021). Service Ecosystem Design: Propositions, Process Model, and Future Research Agenda. Journal of Service Research, 24(2), 168–186. The foundational academic paper that introduces and defines the pattern. A must-read for a deep understanding of the theory.
• Manzini, E. (2015). Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation. MIT Press. While not explicitly about Service Ecosystem Design, this book provides the philosophical underpinning for the principle of “collective designing” and is essential for understanding the shift in the designer’s role.
• Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2016). Institutions and axioms: an extension and update of service-dominant logic. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 44(1), 5-23. A key paper for understanding the theoretical roots of the pattern in Service-Dominant Logic and institutional theory.

Organizations & Communities:

• Service Design Network (SDN): The leading international community for service design professionals. Their conferences and publications often feature case studies and discussions related to systemic and ecosystem-level design.
• CTF, Service Research Center (Karlstad University, Sweden): A leading academic research center where much of the foundational work on Service Ecosystem Design has been developed.

Tools & Platforms:

• Ecosystem Mapping Tools: Software like Kumu, Miro, or Mural can be used to visually map the actors and relationships within a service ecosystem.
• Agent-Based Modeling Software: Tools like NetLogo can be used to simulate the emergent effects of changes to institutional arrangements.

References:

Flaig, A., Guyader, H., & Ottosson, M. (2025). Design-Oriented stakeholder engagement in service ecosystems. Journal of Business Research, 191, 115255.

Manzini, E. (2015). Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation. MIT Press.

Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2016). Institutions and axioms: an extension and update of service-dominant logic. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 44(1), 5-23.

Vink, J., Koskela-Huotari, K., Tronvoll, B., Edvardsson, B., & Wetter-Edman, K. (2021). Service Ecosystem Design: Propositions, Process Model, and Future Research Agenda. Journal of Service Research, 24(2), 168–186.

Lawrence, T. B., & Suddaby, R. (2006). Institutions and institutional work. In S. R. Clegg, C. Hardy, T. B. Lawrence, & W. R. Nord (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organization studies (pp. 215-254). Sage Publications Ltd.