Purpose: This paper is about data, information, knowledge and judgment; their definitions and their parallel cognitive dimensionalities; and it is about their implications in innovation. This paper aims to discuss and illustrate the implications of this cognitive framework on innovation science and on the ability to innovate. To that end, the authors use a progression of examples and cases to identify and discuss new challenges and predicaments in innovation.Design/methodology/approach: The authors discuss how the development of Chemistry, as a science, inspires this work. But the authors have purposely eschewed examples from mathematics or the natural sciences. Instead, the authors study business examples because they are more readily understood. However, the implications they reveal, on innovation, are no less significant. The explosive volume, complexity and requirements – for data, information, knowledge and intelligence in business – are arguably more messy, demanding and difficult. They are sociotechnical problems of unprecedented scale and qualitative change.Findings: The authors frame their conclusion as the mega-nano hypothesis, which asserts that problems, at this new scale and qualitative difference, cannot be solved with conventional thinking and tired mental models. They obstruct the ability to innovate and impede creative thinking about theory.Originality/value: The mega-nano hypothesis is consistent with historical trajectories in scientific development. Namely, when there are mega or nano changes of scale and frame-breaking phenomena, a new science is required to address the new and unprecedented problems that emerge.

In the absence of an axiomatic and rigorous foundation, Services risk, at best, being a narrow multi/inter-disciplinary domain At worst, it is a trade or a craft like plumbing or hairdressing. To address this weakness, we propose an epistemological foundation for a transdisciplinary Service Science and Engineering. The epistemology is predicated on a set of normative axioms, first principles, and a differential equation. We argue that a truly convincing transdisciplinary foundation must be able to derive and uncover new, novel, and quantitative transdisciplinary themes, which have escaped conventional qualitative analyses. To that end, we reveal and discuss the property of chilarity and the principle takchronicity for services. Physics, unlike services, has the laws of nature and mathematics to serve as a normative base. Similarly, mathematics is grounded on lemmas and theorems. This base enables new insightful theorems and novel mathematical theories like geometry and topology. All sciences require normative axioms, but they are not sufficient to frame a transdisciplinary science or engineering. There must be also a right way that legitimizes the praxis. For example, the Scientific Method. Hence, we will introduce our Services Method. Altogether, our epistemological base, analytic equations, new transdisciplinary themes, and Service Method help frame Services Science and Engineering more rigorously.

We focus on the business-to-business (B2B) with the decision-making unit (DMU) market, organized with cross-functional decision-making units (DMUs). DMUs participate during the service’s life cycle. B2B services are not fungible commodities like haircuts or shoeshines. A DMU is an appointed team of experts to participate in buying and selling. They make the selling-buying process, implementation, and operations more efficient, practical, and satisfying. We exclude from this chapter business-to-client (B2C), client-to-business (C2B), and client-to-client (C2C) services. B2B services’ core predicate is that the service value is co-created by providers and customers. B2B service is a complex, multidisciplinary science that requires a precisely defined epistemology. We specify B2B service value with a differential equation, as an epistemic foundation, and stipulate axiomatic first principles. B2B services are also an engineering discipline requiring systematic design, development, and implementation, with a bias to action. These attributes describe our service method. As a commercial practice, service is also a marketing discipline with a prescribed value pricing methodology where value is delivered with physical and non-physical “social and material” artifacts. Our B2B service literature review will emphasize the science, engineering, and sociotechnical design of value co-creation. We close with research and managerial implications.