When comparing the research on service topics with those research activities that focus on materialgoods, an obvious gap can be observed. While there exists a broad range of models, methods and tools for the development of goods, the development of services has hardly become a topic of scientific literature. An approach for capturing services as an R&D object is made within the project under the generalheading of ‘‘service engineering‘‘, and an attempt made to systematise the development of services. Ways in which the service sector can profit from the wealth of experience with classic product development without neglecting the specific characteristics of services are demonstrated.