Business Model Innovation: Process and Tools for Service Transformation of Industrial Firms

Nowadays a comprehensive transformation from traditional business models, based on the product sales, to new product-service systems (PSS) can be seen as an opportunity for industrial firms to gain revenues and new competitive advantage. Nevertheless manufacturers frequently fight with this innovation, as it requires fundamental changes in the structure, culture and competencies of the company. Rarely, industrial firms understand how they should reconfigure the elements of their business model (BM) in order to servitize. In addition, literature has only recently started to discuss PSS BM extensively and still gives little support to the decision-making process regarding the service transformation. To provide a first step into closing this gap, this paper proposes a new integrated multi-step methodology for the selection and design of the most appropriate PSS BM. In order to enable the application of the methodology to practical cases, a specific toolkit has been developed. An action research was then performed to illustrate an application of the framework in a capital goods manufacturer and provide research insights.