Tensions in value spaces: The organizational buying center and advanced services

Advanced services necessitate redistribution of activities and new value co-creation processes and configurations, which are negotiated through interactions between organizations' buying centers (BCs) and selling centers (SCs). Transition to advanced services is rarely smooth because ecosystem actors often move into value spaces or territories (in which value is created/co-created) occupied and/or coveted by other actors. An exploratory qualitative approach was used to explore the value-space tensions (22 semi-structured interviews with senior executives from a range of industrial sectors and ecosystem positions). Our findings identify four advanced services lifecycle phases and demonstrate how managing these tensions across phases and BCs and SCs within the ecosystem is a necessary negotiated process impacting value creation/co-creation. We adopt a new theoretical lens (combining territorial servitization and territoriality from economic geography) to explore value spaces within-and-between BCs and SCs in advanced services ecosystems, and contribute to extant literature by: (1) delineating servitization value-space tensions as either cognitive/relational or Cartesian/physical; (2) illustrating how value-space tensions within-and-between BCs and SCs hamper advanced service implementation; (3) revealing how value-space tensions within-and-between BCs and SCs impact value co-creation; and, (4) demonstrating how different tensions manifest between BCs and SCs across the advanced services lifecycle

Differentiation through services in product-centric b2b companies

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Mechanisms for developing operational capabilities in digital servitization

Purpose – Digital servitization concerns how manufacturers utilize digital technologies to enhance their provision of services. Although digital servitization requires that manufacturers possess new capabilities, in contrast to strategic (or dynamic) capabilities, little is known about how they develop the required operational capabilities. The paper investigates the mechanisms for developing operational capabilities in digital servitization. Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents an exploratory study based on 15 large manufacturers operating in Europe engaged in digital servitization. Findings – Three operational capability development mechanisms are set out that manufacturers use to facilitate digital servitization: learning (developing capabilities in-house), building (bringing the requisite capabilities into the manufacturer), and acquiring (utilizing the capabilities of other actors). These mechanisms emphasize exploitation and exploration efforts within manufacturers and in collaborations with upstream and downstream partners. The findings demonstrate the need to combine these mechanisms for digital servitization according to combinations that match each manufacturer’s traditional servitization phase: a) initial phase - building and acquiring, b) middle phase - learning, building and acquiring, and c) advanced phase - learning and building. Originality – This study reveals three operational capability development mechanisms, highlighting the parallel use of these mechanisms for digital servitization. It provides a holistic understanding of operational capability development mechanisms used by manufacturers by combining three theoretical perspectives (organizational learning, absorptive capacity, and network perspectives). The paper demonstrates that digital servitization requires the significant application of building and acquiring mechanisms to develop the requisite operational capabilities