6.2 What is a stakeholder?

A stakeholder is defined as follows:

Persons, groups, or organizations that have direct or indirect stake in an organization, because it can affect or be affected by the organization’s actions, objectives, and policies.

This definition was also coined by Roberta Tassi, the service designer. I quite like her even though I have never met her.

To me, a stakeholder is a user like any other. Stakeholders are as important as end users; this is something that makes service design particular. Many innovation fields are what is called user-centric. This means they love the end user and want to make them really happy. Service design wants the same, but doesn’t want to make only the end user happy; it wants to care about the staff members, the partner organizations, and whoever else helps to create a service. These people are what we call stakeholders.