Cinzia Palumbo

The Future of Services - Industrialization Strategies in Healthcare: Business Models and Industrialization Patterns in the U.s. Healthcare Sector Cinzia Palumbo

In the last 30 years the world's economy has experienced the inexorable rise of the service sector. Well developed nations have become service economies and developing countries are catching up very fast. Despite the importance of such sector, the research in this field proved to be rather unsatisfactory, especially with respect to a necessary taxonomy of services. The aim of this book is twofold. First, we provide a new theoretical model that could help both researchers and managers frame the variety of the service sector. Second, the paper aims at exploring the phenomenon of the industrialization of services and in particular at understanding if such tendency will necessarily translate in the future into more standardized services. Such analysis is conducted by focusing on the Healthcare Industry in the U. S., which additionally allows us to test the matrix proposed in the first part of our work. A case-based analysis is therefore carried out, unveiling prevalent business models and industrialization trends.