IBM, IIMB to hold workshop on SSME

Bangalore, Oct 9: IBM Research Laboratory and the Indian Institute of Management - Bangalore (IIM-B) will hold a national workshop on Services Sciences, Management and Engineering (SSME) here tomorrow.

The objective of the workshop was to engage Government, academia and industry in a dialogue to identify the skills necessary to capture opportunity in an increasingly services-based worldwide economy, IBM said in a release here today.

IBM India Research Lab Director Dr Daniel M Dias said the workshop aimed at triggering a national discussion on SSME as the fulcrum of growth and competitive advantage, and building the foundation of a new inter-disciplinary curriculum in leading Indian universities. ''We are in a fast-moving, competitive economy, one for which many students are unprepared as they emerge with more traditional skills,'' he added.

The release said the world economy was experiencing the largest labour force migration in history, driven by an environment altered by broader global communications, growth of emerging markets and technology innovation. Services now accounted for over 50 per cent of the labour force in Brazil, Russia, Japan and Germany and over 75 per cent in India, the United States and the United Kingdom. This shift to services had created a huge skills gap, especially in the area of high value services.

The new inter-disciplinary academic field SSME aimed at studying, improving and teaching services innovation. Its goal was to create a services sector that could develop and implement technological applications to help businesses, Governments and other organisations improve what they do and tap completely new areas of opportunity.

It said the workshop would have a series of brainstorming sessions on issues related to services innovation, curriculum to meet the future needs of industry, methods for teaching services innovation and the creation of an SSME ecosystem in India.

UNI