A service science context in education driven by disruptive innovation and the Internet of Things

Summary form only given. Global Engineering is the last frontier in education. It creates a dilemma of providing engineering education anywhere in the World, preserving local cultural values, and applying it anywhere around the Globe. A recent Singapore Declaration [ASEE Global Forum, 2009], and consecutive World Engineering Education Forums, [1] paved the roadmap towards Global Engineering calling for practical solutions to implement the vision of a global engineer. In response to these challenges, several “disruptive innovation” [Christensen, 1995] solutions such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) and Massive Open Online Laboratories (MOOL) have been introduced including the one based on the Internet of Things (IOT) and disruptive microelectronics [2]. Disruptive Microelectronics which includes embedded systems, Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC), Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), and Programmable Systems On a Chip (PSOC), is one of excellent case studies of disruptive technologies (or disruptive innovation) which is defined as an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology. The Internet of Things is the next generation of the Internet connecting objects, not just people. Since the ultimate goal is to produce new industries globally, understanding, measuring, evaluating, and preserving the integrity of global engineering becomes fundamental. The latter is proposed to be addressed by Quality Assessment (QA) of emerging global engineering curricula and scholars involved in teaching of global engineering. For example, International Society for Engineering Education (IGIP) is one of the leaders providing international certification of scholars and one of the frontrunners in fostering engineering on line, critical for global engineering. The overall process of global engineering education addressing essential skills for engineers from any country to be competitive in an international market for engineering knowhow, with skills not longer limited to cultural sensitivity needed only for product design destined for diverse markets can be superbly captured by Service Science [Spohrer, 2008]. Service science is an interdisciplinary paradigm to the study, design, and implementation of complex systems in which specific arrangements of people and technologies take actions that provide value for others [3]. It is also a proposed academic discipline and research area that would complement multiplicity of disciplines that contribute to knowledge about service.