Service Science, S-D Logic and Network Theory : Integrating the Perspectives for a New Research Agenda

The idea of the Naples Forum started after a discussion about marketing theory, whose discipline needed new approaches, new grand theories, renewed paradigms. Intriguing issues such as complexity, system thinking, human behavior, competitiveness and service systems were addressed, but we were not able to see clearly what was missing. The discipline has reached a turning point calling for more systemic and integrative theory. Service-Dominant (S-D) logic and Service Science contributed a synthesis of much that had been developed during the past decades in Northen Europe, UK, France and the US; still there was something missing. And then, far from solving the problem, long discussion had to address these topics jointly. They needed support from theory that addresses complexity. Network theory and more specifically Many-to-Many Marketing and the Viable System Approach do just that. The themes of the 2009 Naples Forum on Service-currently catching the imagination of scholars and practitioners worldwide- represent efforts in that direction