Exploring smart services as the future of the service industry

Nicola Bilstein studied at the University of Paderborn and successfully completed her Master's degree in International Business Studies in 2008. At the invitation of Prof. Dr. Shashi Matta, she visited the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University as a Visiting Scholar in 2011, before completing her doctorate (Dr. rer. pol.) in Service Management at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in 2012 on the topic of "Rethinking Co-Production in Service: Conceptual and Empirical Investigations of the Antecedents and Outcomes of Mandatory and Optional Co-Production".

The DFG-funded project "Effects of Customer Co-Production in Reactive and Proactive Service Recovery" started for her in 2014 with an Eigene Stelle. The Eigene Stelle enables researchers from Germany and abroad to work in a from Germany and abroad to devote themselves exclusively to the scientific project they are scientific project at a German research institution. Before moving to Bayreuth University, she worked as a junior professor for business administration - especially management of intelligent products - at Bielefeld University. In December 2021, she habilitated at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt on the topic of "Advances in Service (Recovery) Management: The Meaning of Recovery Time, Participation and Third Parties".

"In addition to the interdisciplinarity in practice, I am also excited about the trans- and intradisciplinarity at the University of Bayreuth," says Prof. Dr. Nicola Bilstein.

"Due to the development in the area of networked systems, robotics and communication and information technology, I see the future of service management at the interfaces to business informatics, entrepreneurship as well as technology management and therefore the focus on smart services will have to be intensified," says Bilstein.