At the recent Service Design Conference in Amsterdam (link), organised by the Service Design Network (SDN) the Nordic Countries were very visible. One of the expert panels consisted totally of Nordics, and it seems that the Nordic research councils have been quick to finance research into service design.
This is now being followed up by initiatives in the area of design of public services. A recent call by the Danish Enterprise and Construction Ministry (link) for projects within the area of Service Design is allocating several million Danish Kroner to be used for pilot projects during Spring 2009. We discussed at the conference the potential that lies in improving public services through service design, and how this has the potential to create an export industry of knowledge, solutions and services.
The Danes are putting up money to start this. I hope that the Norwegian government follow up.