James C. Spohrer
Director of IBM Global University Programs since 2009, Jim founded IBM's first Service Research group in 2003 at the Almaden Research Center with a focus on STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) for Service Sector innovations. He led this group to attain eight times return on investment with two IBM outstanding and nine accomplishment awards. Working with service research pioneers from many academic disciplines, Jim advocates for Service Science, Management, Engineering, and Design (SSMED) as an integrative extended-STEM framework for global competency development,
economic growth, and advancement of science. In 2000, Jim became the founding CTO of IBM's first Venture Capital Relations group in Silicon Valley. In the mid 1990's, he lead Apple Computer's Learning Technologies group, where he was awarded DEST (Distinguished Engineer Scientist and Technologist) status. Jim received a Ph.D. in Computer Science/Artificial Intelligence from Yale University and a B.S. in Physics from MIT.
Mary Jo Bitner
Mary Jo Bitner, Ph.D. is Professor of Marketing and PetSmart Chair in Services Leadership at the W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. She also serves as Academic Director of the Center for Services Leadership at ASU. In 2003, she was awarded the American Marketing Association's SERVSIG recognition for Career Contributions to the Services Discipline Award, and in 2005 she received a IBM Faculty Award, one of the first such awards given to a services researcher in business. She has published more than forty-five journal articles appearing in Journal of Marketing, Journal of Service Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Service Management, California Management Review, Journal of Retailing, and others. She is co-author of Services Marketing:
Integrating Customer Focus Across the Firm (McGraw-Hill, Fifth edition, 2009), a leading text in services that has been translated into numerous languages and is used at universities across the U.S. and worldwide.
Birgit Mager
Since 1995 Professor Birgit Mager holds the professorship on "Service Design" at the University of Applied Sciences Cologne, Germany. Since then she has developed the innovative field of Service Design constantly in theory, methodology and in practice. Her numerous lectures, her publications and her projects have strongly supported the implementation of a new understanding of the economical, ecological and social function of design and its impact on services. Throughout the last 15 year she has proven in a multitude of projects the potentials Service Design offers for quality
improvement and innovation for public, private and industrial services. Birgit Mager taught Service Design as a guest lecturer in Switzerland, Austria, Great Britain, Scandinavia, Portugal, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and USA. She is co-founder of the International Service Design Network (SDN) and the head of the Service Design Network, located in Cologne, Germany. She is editor in chief of the Service Design Journal "Touchpoint" - the first issue was released in March 2009. Birgit Mager is founder and manager of sedes|research, the Centre for Service Design Research at the University of
Applied Sciences Cologne.
Paulo MagalhÃes
Paulo Magalhães is CIO and head of Innovation of the retail businesses of Sonae, which leads the Portuguese food and non-food sectors, and operates in Portugal and Spain with over 850 stores. He joined Sonae in1996 and was involved in the transformations that consolidated Sonae's top position as the customers' most trusted retailer. Paulo took part in the foundation of Enabler and Tlantic, two companies providing software services for retailers, and is currently the leading manager of the latter. Although diverse in nature, the services designed and supported by the teams he is involved with synthesize one simple yet strong principle: the ultimate judge of service effectiveness is customers' satisfaction.
Paulo is enthusiastic about building bridges with the University through a series of initiatives that help exploit complementary areas between educational academy and business. Currently, he presents some seminars and participates in a set of joint projects with PUC of Porto Alegre in Brazil, Porto University in Portugal, and teaches in EGP-University of Porto Business School.
