Becoming a smart solution provider : Reconfiguring a product manufacturer's strategic capabilities and processes to facilitate business model innovation

The present study analyzes how a product manufacturer alters its strategic capabilities to become a smart solution provider by employing its dynamic capabilities. We scrutinize how a manufacturer facilitates strategic change by realigning its strategic capabilities and processes from a focus on technical product-development capabilities to product-service-software development capabilities, reconfiguring organizational routines focused on efficiency to routines focused on customer productivity, and shifting from a product logic to a service logic. By studying six leading manufacturing firms based on 86 manager interviews, the present study finds that strategic capabilities are renewed through dynamic capabilities, which involve a reconfiguration of strategic capabilities and processes. Furthermore, manufacturers need to consider the dynamic interplay between resource realignment modes (building digital capabilities, leveraging existing capabilities, accessing external capabilities, and releasing decaying capabilities), hence stressing their reinforcing mechanism to converge products, services, and software. For managers, our study highlights several strategic renewal practices designed to assist and benchmark how strategic capabilities are altered.© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd under a Creative Commons license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Consolidating digital servitization research : A systematic review, integrative framework, and future research directions

Manufacturing firms are increasingly transforming toward digital servitization, characterized by convergence and simultaneous gains from digitalization and servitization. Due to the marked academic and practical relevance of digital servitization, we are witnessing a significant upsurge in studies published on this emerging topic. Thus, the present study undertakes a comprehensive bibliometric analysis to synthesize the prior knowledge on digital servitization and, more importantly, to highlight areas for future research. The findings from the analysis are organized so that important authors and organizations are highlighted through analyses of citation chains and co-authorship networks. The bibliographic coupling analysis of HistCite and VOSviewer reveals the emergence of four dominant thematic areas in the digital servitization literature. These four thematic areas are aligning digitalization and servitization transformations, value co-creation perspectives on digital servitization, conceptualizing the platform strategy for digital servitization, and business model innovation in digital servitization. Finally, based on the analysis of how the literature on digital servitization has evolved over the last two decades and the deeper analysis of thematic analysis, we raise important research questions and provide numerous areas for future research.© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Collaborative networks: A pillar of digital transformation

UID/EEA/00066/2019 POCI-01-0247-FEDER-033926The notion of digital transformation encompasses the adoption and integration of a variety of new information and communication technologies for the development of more efficient, flexible, agile, and sustainable solutions for industrial systems. Besides technology, this process also involves new organizational forms and leads to new business models. As such, this work addresses the contribution of collaborative networks to such a transformation. An analysis of the collaborative aspects required in the various dimensions of the 4th industrial revolution is conducted based on a literature survey and experiences gained from several research projects. A mapping between the identified collaboration needs and research results that can be adopted from the collaborative networks area is presented. Furthermore, several new research challenges are identified and briefly characterized.publishe

New Hampshire University Research and Industry Plan: A Roadmap for Collaboration and Innovation

This University Research and Industry plan for New Hampshire is focused on accelerating innovation-led development in the state by partnering academia’s strengths with the state’s substantial base of existing and emerging advanced industries. These advanced industries are defined by their deep investment and connections to research and development and the high-quality jobs they generate across production, new product development and administrative positions involving skills in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)

Recongifuring assets for digital servitization : interplay and capability enhancing practices

This paper investigates how manufacturing companies reconfigure their assets in their digital servitization journey (transition from selling products to selling product-service-software offerings). By studying five leading manufacturers for a longer time-period (2010-2018), we found that depending on their previous role of being whether system sellers or system integrators, their capability development practices differed: system sellers used practices emphasizing control (e.g., insourcing, acquisitions) whereas system integrators stressed practices that enabled flexibility (e.g., outsourcing, alliances). Based on these findings, manufacturers should establish their vision as provider of smart, connected solutions, and develop associated capabilities and practices that support this vision achievement.©2022 The authors. Published by Universitat Politècnica de València. Please cite the original version: Huikkola, T., Kohtamäki, M. & Ylimäki, J. (2022). Recongifuring assets for digital servitization: interplay and capability enhancing practices. In: Tracey, B., Heinonen, K., Trull-Domínguez, O. & Peiró-Signes, Á. (eds.) Proceedings of the QUIS17 : The 17th International Research Symposium on Service Excellence in Management. València: Universitat Politècnica de València. http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/QUIS17.2022.15169fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Data Spaces

This open access book aims to educate data space designers to understand what is required to create a successful data space. It explores cutting-edge theory, technologies, methodologies, and best practices for data spaces for both industrial and personal data and provides the reader with a basis for understanding the design, deployment, and future directions of data spaces. The book captures the early lessons and experience in creating data spaces. It arranges these contributions into three parts covering design, deployment, and future directions respectively. The first part explores the design space of data spaces. The single chapters detail the organisational design for data spaces, data platforms, data governance federated learning, personal data sharing, data marketplaces, and hybrid artificial intelligence for data spaces. The second part describes the use of data spaces within real-world deployments. Its chapters are co-authored with industry experts and include case studies of data spaces in sectors including industry 4.0, food safety, FinTech, health care, and energy. The third and final part details future directions for data spaces, including challenges and opportunities for common European data spaces and privacy-preserving techniques for trustworthy data sharing. The book is of interest to two primary audiences: first, researchers interested in data management and data sharing, and second, practitioners and industry experts engaged in data-driven systems where the sharing and exchange of data within an ecosystem are critical

Literature review on industrial digital platforms : A business model perspective and suggestions for future research

Rapid digitalization of industries has led to the proliferation of complex industrial digital platforms; however, few industrial platform leaders have successfully established sustainable business models around their offerings. The need for a concrete definition of industrial digital platforms and their business models further complicates our understanding of the issue. In this prospecting review, we critically analyze the existing literature on industrial digital platforms to identify key research themes and research gaps and propose a future research agenda for the industrial digital platform literature from a business model perspective. Drawing on insights from research on industrial platforms, digitalization, digital servitization, and business-to-business (B2B) relationships, our analysis focuses on three key themes in defining the boundaries of industrial digital platforms and the crucial aspects of value creation, value delivery, and value capture on such platforms: (a) co-creative value creation, (b) digitally integrated value delivery, and (c) mutual value capture. The findings of this study and a future research agenda framework provide a roadmap for advancing the understanding of business models for industrial digital platforms. This research aims to contribute to the emerging field of industrial digital platforms and guide future research endeavors in this domain, unlocking the full potential of these platforms for businesses and industries.© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

KIBS, Knowledge Management and Digital Product Service Systems: an explorative investigation

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The evolution from products towards digital platforms: the Schneider Electric case.

Nowadays, servitisation is a common trend among manufacturing firms. Its goal is to increase the understanding of customers’ needs and respond to those needs in the best possible way. In this perspective, digitalization enables servitisation. The Internet of Things is about linking together the physical and the virtual Internet-based world. It allows to track, monitor and interact with physical products, resulting in the enhancement of manufacturing and industrial processes. In this context, many companies focused on the development of IoT-based platforms, which connect devices, industrial assets, etc. in order to gather data and perform data analytics. Accordingly, data collection and analysis are becoming more and more important in managing and understanding of the Global Value Chains, as well as the customers’ emerging needs, helping the companies to drive product innovation and guaranteeing better performances in terms of profitability and competitiveness. Although the results in terms of profits provided by these digital platforms vary greatly from one firm to another, the idea of IoT platforms as an ecosystem that promotes value co-creation beyond corporate boundaries could generate economic viability. In this fast-changing evolutionary path, the number of digital platforms is growing quickly, generating an incredible amount of opportunities and threats for companies, and affecting their strategic decisions. The consequences can be many and varied, for example, affecting the evolution of the firms’ business model. This paper aims at profoundly understanding the Internet of Things and IoT platforms, as well as the changes they generate in the manufacturing industry, by analysing several examples of ongoing real-business cases (e.g. Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure) and investigating the ecosystem perspective.Nowadays, servitisation is a common trend among manufacturing firms. Its goal is to increase the understanding of customers’ needs and respond to those needs in the best possible way. In this perspective, digitalization enables servitisation. The Internet of Things is about linking together the physical and the virtual Internet-based world. It allows to track, monitor and interact with physical products, resulting in the enhancement of manufacturing and industrial processes. In this context, many companies focused on the development of IoT-based platforms, which connect devices, industrial assets, etc. in order to gather data and perform data analytics. Accordingly, data collection and analysis are becoming more and more important in managing and understanding of the Global Value Chains, as well as the customers’ emerging needs, helping the companies to drive product innovation and guaranteeing better performances in terms of profitability and competitiveness. Although the results in terms of profits provided by these digital platforms vary greatly from one firm to another, the idea of IoT platforms as an ecosystem that promotes value co-creation beyond corporate boundaries could generate economic viability. In this fast-changing evolutionary path, the number of digital platforms is growing quickly, generating an incredible amount of opportunities and threats for companies, and affecting their strategic decisions. The consequences can be many and varied, for example, affecting the evolution of the firms’ business model. This paper aims at profoundly understanding the Internet of Things and IoT platforms, as well as the changes they generate in the manufacturing industry, by analysing several examples of ongoing real-business cases (e.g. Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure) and investigating the ecosystem perspective

Next Generation Business Ecosystems: Engineering Decentralized Markets, Self-Sovereign Identities and Tokenization

Digital transformation research increasingly shifts from studying information systems within organizations towards adopting an ecosystem perspective, where multiple actors co-create value. While digital platforms have become a ubiquitous phenomenon in consumer-facing industries, organizations remain cautious about fully embracing the ecosystem concept and sharing data with external partners. Concerns about the market power of platform orchestrators and ongoing discussions on privacy, individual empowerment, and digital sovereignty further complicate the widespread adoption of business ecosystems, particularly in the European Union. In this context, technological innovations in Web3, including blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies, have emerged as potential catalysts for disrupting centralized gatekeepers and enabling a strategic shift towards user-centric, privacy-oriented next-generation business ecosystems. However, existing research efforts focus on decentralizing interactions through distributed network topologies and open protocols lack theoretical convergence, resulting in a fragmented and complex landscape that inadequately addresses the challenges organizations face when transitioning to an ecosystem strategy that harnesses the potential of disintermediation. To address these gaps and successfully engineer next-generation business ecosystems, a comprehensive approach is needed that encompasses the technical design, economic models, and socio-technical dynamics. This dissertation aims to contribute to this endeavor by exploring the implications of Web3 technologies on digital innovation and transformation paths. Drawing on a combination of qualitative and quantitative research, it makes three overarching contributions: First, a conceptual perspective on \u27tokenization\u27 in markets clarifies its ambiguity and provides a unified understanding of the role in ecosystems. This perspective includes frameworks on: (a) technological; (b) economic; and (c) governance aspects of tokenization. Second, a design perspective on \u27decentralized marketplaces\u27 highlights the need for an integrated understanding of micro-structures, business structures, and IT infrastructures in blockchain-enabled marketplaces. This perspective includes: (a) an explorative literature review on design factors; (b) case studies and insights from practitioners to develop requirements and design principles; and (c) a design science project with an interface design prototype of blockchain-enabled marketplaces. Third, an economic perspective on \u27self-sovereign identities\u27 (SSI) as micro-structural elements of decentralized markets. This perspective includes: (a) value creation mechanisms and business aspects of strategic alliances governing SSI ecosystems; (b) business model characteristics adopted by organizations leveraging SSI; and (c) business model archetypes and a framework for SSI ecosystem engineering efforts. The dissertation concludes by discussing limitations as well as outlining potential avenues for future research. These include, amongst others, exploring the challenges of ecosystem bootstrapping in the absence of intermediaries, examining the make-or-join decision in ecosystem emergence, addressing the multidimensional complexity of Web3-enabled ecosystems, investigating incentive mechanisms for inter-organizational collaboration, understanding the role of trust in decentralized environments, and exploring varying degrees of decentralization with potential transition pathways