In the latter half of the 20th century, IBM helped create "computer science" as a field of study for college students and academic research in its efforts to build the information technology industry and supply it with talent.

Today, IBM is again at the forefront of the next major trend in college and professional education. Students of Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME) are now studying the dynamic configurations of people, technologies, organizations and shared information that create and deliver value to customers, providers and other stakeholders—and how they can use management and engineering practices to improve them.

With SSME curricula now on offer or in development at institutions of higher learning around the world, IBM and other institutions interested in the future of innovation hope to enable a new generation of expertise and insight into what makes the world work and how we can make it work better.

We exchanged e-mail with a few of the early adopters: an IBM scientist involved in establishing the field at colleges and universities, professors and administrators at various institutions of higher learning, and a student who is getting his master's degree in this new field of study at the same time he starts his career at the "international business machine" company in the forefront of this new world in education.