Meta-Services in Industry 5.0: A New Paradigm of Intelligent Services in Metaverses

In the era of Industry 5.0 and the emerging metaverses, this study proposes Meta-Services, a novel paradigm that evolves a traditional service system into a multistage ecosystem. In the proposed paradigm, we develop a parallel intelligence-based management framework that enables stakeholders to control and manage the complex dynamics of service delivery in the metaverse. The management framework involves the following three stages: 1) service systems in metaverses; 2) elementary parallel service systems; and 3) parallel intelligence empowered ecosystems. The third stage evolves from the first two stages by incorporating the approach of “designer in the loop”, contributing to more human-centered, adaptive, and resilient service systems. Moreover, a case study in the retail sector is provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed paradigm and show its practical potential.