Competences in digital servitization: a new framework

This paper contributes to the research on servitization in manufacturing companies. Its main purpose is to
describe and explain how the evolving technological landscape is influencing the skills that companies seek for
facilitating the service growth. Grounded on the actual knowledge on this topic, this study presents some
preliminary findings from an on-going research, that focus on the impacts of digital transformation on
competences and capabilities of manufacturers. To this concern, this paper is also part of the broader set of
studies on the forth industrial revolution (I4.0), and on the changes to organization of manufacturing firms due to
the raise of digital business and smart products, smart services, smart workplace, etc. The main contributions of
this research are twofold: first we propose a theoretical framework that - based on the review of the existing
literature – sheds lights on the trends of “digital servitization”. Second, we explore the competences that support
the digital servitization (i.e. “digital competences”). To achieve this latter objective, we carried out interviews
with CEOs, HR and service managers of companies undergoing servitization and digital transformation. This
study also provides avenues for further research dealing with competences for the I4.0 revolution.