Servitization ecology: changing product-centric manufacturers to become product-service providers

Abstract

Companies increasingly demonstrate interest in servitization strategies. Important advances have been reported in the understanding of this phenomenon. Whilst research extensively highlights design and benefits of servitization strategies, less attention is dedicated to the difficulties that companies experience when transforming their strategies to integrate services. Experience shows that servitization constitutes a major managerial challenge. We address the lack of understanding of servitization related change processes by empirically identifying implementation obstacles in the transformation process and validate these by mapping them onto the antecedents of organizational ecology theory. We discuss the significance of our findings and highlight further research opportunities