Organizations are increasingly finding themselves facing complex and dynamic markets and operating environments. They are constantly striving to understand and respond to changing expectations and realities: customers; governments; markets; economic and social instabilities; and, even the environment; are combining forces to create greater fluidity and complexity. These forces challenge the underpinning supply chain processes and philosophies that support today’s global players (Paton and McLaughlin, 2008). Organizations have to both better sense and respond to changes in their business environment.  There is a growing realisation, from both practitioners and academics (Lee, 2003), that to succeed in developing and sustaining competitive advantage enterprises must: identify challenges and opportunities quickly and succinctly, while managing the transition process in an innovatory manner. Organizations are waking up to the realisation that their supply chain processes are the engines by which they drive sustainable performance.  However, these processes can not be run purely as ‘technology centric’ activities, but must consider, if innovation and an ability to manage transformation are key, the social and cultural, as well as management practice aspects of the organization (McLaughlin and Paton, 2008). Services science is an emerging discipline that aims to combine fundamental science and engineering theories, models and applications with facets of the management field, particularly knowledge, supply chain and change management, in order to enhance and advance service innovation.  Service innovation is fast becoming the key driver of socio-economic growth and as such warrants increasing academic and commercial research attention (Paulson, 2006).  IBM and associated academic (Chesbrough et al, 2006; Allen et al, 2006) governmental and commercial partners have been in the vanguard of those pioneering and promoting service science (Paulson, 2006; Allen et al, 2006). Activity to date has tended to focus on what might be considered the technological underpinnings of the new discipline (Abe, 2005), but it is clear to all concerned that what is required is a cross-disciplinary collaboration if the power of service innovation capability is to be truly harnessed (Chesbrough et al, 2006; Paulson, 2006; Allen et al, 2006; Abe, 2005). The recently launched Complex Services Innovation Research Network (CSIRN) is just one example of the growing interest in services science and innovation. CSIRN (www.gla.ac.uk/departments/csirn) have invited a range of academics and practitioners to contribute to a series of papers to be published in the EMJ over the next year. The core aim being to stimulate a debate around the topic of services science and innovation that engages with the multiple stakeholders: academics students and practitioners from a range of disciples and backgrounds. We hope the services science series promotes an ongoing dialogue: one that some consider may even lead to an exciting new integrated discipline; and thank the EMJ for the opportunity to edit and source the inputs. This is a new departure for the EMJ, a fitting occasion for such a venture given the subject matter: the editors, and publishers, are adopting an innovatory approach to test the validity of a ‘technological’ vehicle that is intended to stimulate, disseminate and evaluate innovatory potential.  The series editors intend to feedback the results of the blog dialogue by mid 2009 and the EMJ editorial team would encourage the submission of additional services science and innovation related papers.