Athrú

Who we are

The International Alliance for Future Service Systems, Athrú (Irish for ‘change’), brings together experts and leading researchers from across various disciplines and industry and public sector organisations forming an ideal platform for future service and process science research.
Athrú interdisciplinary research programme (see diagram) is based on engaged research and design science with an overarching aim to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate its practical application for service transition towards mature sustainable service ecosystems.

There has been a fundamental change in the nature of innovation within manufacturing, services firms and the public sector. Digitalisation, globalisation and sustainability are major driving factors and challenges for societal change. A wide range of digital technologies (including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Visualization, Augmented and Virtual Realities) are driving this transformation. Data, its sharing and responsible exploitation enable disruptive business models, new product developments, innovative processes and services. As a result, organisations are shifting from product-oriented to service-oriented offerings. This ‘Servitisation’ involves a strategic transformation of organisations that place service, instead of product-only solutions at its core.

Athrú

• enables a deep transformation of enterprise ecosystems, crafted to maximise impact in key areas including economic, societal, human capacity, public policy, international engagement and environmental areas.
• provides significant opportunities to develop digital services and tackles how end-to-end service and processes can be designed and developed for the benefit of individuals, business and society.
• develops a systematic approach for service and process innovation to harness technology advances and data to deliver scaled and sustainable solutions. There is a requirement between designing new technical solutions, data and understanding the need, benefits for those innovations, together with the policy, regulatory environment and the user in focus.
• engages and collaborates with a wide range of stakeholders (i.e. industry, government departments, policy makers, local and regional government, end user, businesses, citizens) across the research themes.
• researches insights in redesigning value networks thus supporting data sharing and encompassing new technology possibilities towards a sustainable service ecosystem.