Overall, the SDIN project has fully accomplishing the objectives set for the project. The 9 ESRs are well advanced in their PhDs and are expected to finish their doctoral programs in the coming years. Funding is already secured for all ESRs that need it to finish their PhD's. This accomplished the objective of attaining critical mass to significantly advance research on service design and innovation. The advancements in service design and innovation research are already evident with dozens of conference participations and impactful publications already published. Namely. three articles have already been published in the Journal of Service Management (Impact Factor: 3.4 in 2018) and one in Design Studies (Impact Factor of 3.39 in 2018). Many others are in different stages of preparation and review. These publications reflect advances on the main topics of the project, namely in the understanding of interdisciplinary contributions to service design and innovation, on service design approaches for service logic innovation, service design methods for technology-enabled services and for engaging stakeholders, stakeholder participation and engagement in value co-creation (including public services), customer experience in value networks, service prototyping for value constellations and design of service platforms for service ecosystems.
Three fundamental courses were developed and offered not only to the ESRs but to other Phd students from the beneficiaries, raising the potential for spill over effects from the SDIN project. The fundamental courses have also been recognized by University of Porto, allowing for future editions of these courses to be opened, thus ensuring a lasting impact of the SDIN project. The results of the SDIN project were also disseminated through the SDIN Annual Conferences. These conferences had a combined number of more than 250 participants, accomplishing their goal of exposing the research done in SDIN to companies and other regional partners of the SDIN beneficiaries. The SDIN Conferences accomplished their potential of producing spill-over effects that are an important objective of the project. These conferences also allowed the ESRs to start building their own network of contacts outside academia, potentiating their employability opportunities. The academic beneficiaries have also reinforced their leading role on service design and innovation research with Maastricht University successfully organizing Servsig 2016 (www.servsig2016.com) University of Porto successfully organizing QUIS15 (www.fe.up.pt/quis15) in 2017 and IPDMC in 2018, and Politecnico di Milano successfully organizing SERVDES in 2018. These are major service research and service design conferences that attracted hundreds of researchers and practitioners.
Finally, the non-academic sector was well integrated and contributed to the network with the two non-academic beneficiaries (EDP and the County Council of Värmland) being completely in tune with the other beneficiaries. The County Council of Värmland offered various secondment opportunities and organized a workshop. Also, non-academic associated partners have offered secondment opportunities.
