Service Scaling on Hyper-Networks

Service scaling is concerned with service productivity, and hyper-networks with the design of service scaling. This new model uniquely explains Internet-based economic activities, such as e-commerce/e-business and social networking, which are quintessential new genres of service for Knowledge Economy. These activities possess unprecedented promises for scaling: up (reaching the population), down (personalization), and transformational (new business designs). The concept of hyper-networks has been proposed recently by one of the authors to help explain the analytical nature of such scaling. It establishes the principle of designing multiple simultaneous layers of digital connections (networking) of persons and organizations on the same basic networks (e.g., the Internet), and interrelating them through "value worm holes" to inflate value propositions (business spaces) and enable massive, simultaneous value cocreations across the life cycles of persons and organizations. This paper further analyzes the mathematical properties of hyper-networks in the context of a person's multiple roles in his/her life cycle, where each role sparks a particular network. Agent-based simulation experiments confirm that multi-layered networking (e.g., simultaneous multiple social networks) decreases exponentially the degrees of separation, and thereby increases the possibility for value proposition and cocreation in the community. [ Service Science , ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]