Design Business and Service Conference (April 2013, Rome)

Dates: 18-19 April 2013
Location: Rome, Italy
Website: http://www.dbs-2013.com/
Deadline for proposals: 29 Jan 2013

This year’s guiding theme: Design(ing) Business and Services

Over the past decade, several conferences and interactive workshops have focused on managing as designing, on design management, business design and on changing the decision-making paradigm within the management field. Design is taught to management students and management to design students. Managers now can be thought of as designers, although they may not even be conscious about the design practices and methods they employ. In the midst of this development, the design of services has emerged as an important issue in professional conferences, in academic environments, and in the business world. Overall, it seems that the boundaries between professional claims are getting more and more fuzzy: Marketing departments are claiming that they have been developing services for years. Similarly, design thinking is moving through university departments and through corporate offices with the speed of a fashion fad.

The aim of this year’s conference is to develop the necessary discourses around designing in the contexts of business, services and management, and to deepen our understanding around the following topics:

Designing business as a service
Design thinking in business and service design
Designing policies, frameworks for services
Design management in contrast to business design
Designing business systems and service systems
Limits of designing business, Limits of designing services

Please submit a proposal for your contribution via the online form on our website by January 29th, 2013 (fixed deadline). We have a tradition of calling these contributions provocations. Please provide a title for the provocation, and select one of the above topic areas for presentation. Your provocation should be at least 500 but no more than 1500 words. Your provocation should contribute to the discussion and the chosen topic and it should have the potential to be developed into a full paper after the conference. Authors of accepted provocations are automatically accepted to participate at the conference. The conference has no general access, since it is a working conference. Author information should include your full name and e-mail address, a short biography (25-50 words) including your background, current position, key activities and projects.  Provocations will be accepted pending review on an ongoing basis until the conference has filled up. This conference is limited to 90 participants.  All provocations will be reviewed by the review board (Jurgen Faust, Sabine Junginger, Richard Boland).

There is a conference fee of 550 Euros, which covers two full days of the conference. It includes access to all conference events, evening activities and networking events. The fee also includes a conference welcome kit with all necessary information including the book publication from the 2011 conference. The fee is due if your provocation has been accepted and you plan to attend the conference. There is a reduced fee for students and IED members (290 Euros).