Abstract

Service Economy is changing as long as the contemporary evolution is transforming it as one of the critical factors of the productivity and the production growth. This change is involving both the concept of service and the firm business models. The service concept was firstly designed more than fifty years ago, when the Ford paradigm was predominating, on the basis of the distinction between goods (material) and services (immaterial, impossible to be stocked and physically delivered). Nowadays this distinction based on immateriality is no longer useful, since the ICTs enable the conservation and the transfer of services and the distance communication between demand and supply. The service concept is evolving also for another reason: consumption is going beyond the needs perspective and is connecting more and more to desires. In this sense, also material goods need to be built on intangible elements, such as new meanings, experiences, identities and customer care, the same elements that have been considered only as service attributes, for a long time. What is a service becoming today? How is its business model characterized? The two main configurations in the model, neo-services and neo-industry, meet at a mid-way which is generated by the cross over of the fordist trade off (between quantityquality). Neo-services and neo-industry generate new and convergent business models that bring to the new tertiary configuration. It is not subordinate to industry; it can lead to the development of production through innovation and can emphasize immaterial nature and performances, like knowledge and relationships.