The digital transformation offers new opportunities for organizations to expand their existing service portfolio in order to achieve competitive advantages. A popular way to create new customer value is the offer of analytics-based services (ABS)—services that apply analytical methods to data to empower customers to make better decisions and to solve complex problems. However, research still lacks to provide a profound conceptualization of this novel service type. Similarly, actionable insights on how to purposefully establish ABS in the market to enrich the service portfolio remain scarce. We perform a cluster analysis of 105 ABS and triangulate it with a revelatory case study to identify four generic ABS archetypes and to unveil their specific service objectives and characteristics. We also isolate essential factors that shape decision-making regarding the choice of adequate archetypes and subsequent transitions between them. The detailed characterization of different ABS types contributes to a more profound theorizing process on ABS as well as provides a systematization for strategic opportunities to enrich service portfolios in practice.

How do manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises perceive and realize the potential of emerging technologies for the innovation of smart product-service systems? We address this question by conducting nine expert interviews with representatives in the manufacturing sector. We apply qualitative content analysis to identify current practices, affordances, and constraints in the adoption of technologies to evolve offerings towards smart product-service systems.Building on this inductive empirical approach, we postulate three overarching affordances and four constraints that companies perceive in this process. We conclude by reflecting on applying affordances as our theoretical lens and postulate a multi-level approach to grasp and outline the multi-faceted implications of emerging digital technologies on organizations.

Nowadays, companies operate in increasingly competitive and dynamic markets with fast-changing customer needs. Simultaneously, major advances are being made in information and communication technologies, and the digitization of products is progressing. Based on these economic and technological trends, smart product-service systems (PSS) are emerging as a new form of business model. Recent studies show that the transition to developing smart PSS is a major challenge for companies and that they require methodological support, as their internal structures are undergoing significant changes.In order to provide a sound basis for support, we have undertaken a comprehensive study to identify requirements for a smart PSS development framework. 24 interviews and 5 workshops with companies that have recently focused on the development of smart PSS provide a rich set of empirical data to explore the challenges faced by companies today. We systematically analyzed the data and evaluated the results with our respondents. To increase the robustness and generalizability of our findings, we performed a contextual literature review and analyzed additional cases. This led us to a set of 17 requirements for a smart PSS development framework.

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Smart physical products increasingly shape a connected world and serve as boundary objects for the formation of ‘smart service systems’. While these systems bear the potential to co-create value between partners in various industries, IS research still struggles to fully capture the phenomenon to support successful digital innovation in IoT settings. In our work, we analyze the phenomenon of smart service systems taking an affordance-actualization perspective. Based on a qualitative content analysis of a multi-case study, we identify elements and propositions to build mid-range theoretical knowledge for smart service systems. These conceptual findings are further illustrated with a real-world case study. We suggest that providers and users of smart products not only realize their own affordances via their actions but can affect the immediate concrete outcomes of partners. The developed theoretical framework and six distinct propositions should build the theoretical base for further research into the phenomenon in related disciplines.

Increased digitalization offers today's organizations novel opportunities to enhance value propositions for customers, but also poses significant challenges for traditional businesses. To navigate through the difficult process of digital transformation in this turbulent environment, organizations need to integrate successful innovation management practices and build organizational resilience.In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework that bridges between these two constructs: We describe innovation management as the continuous activity of anticipating and responding to ongoing trends in an organization's environment through innovation, whereas we understand organizational resilience as the capability to adapt or transform an organization's business. By analyzing two illustrative cases, we find indications that a successful digital transformation is not possible without one or the other. Furthermore, we contribute key factors for building organizational resilience and showcase two examples of how to leverage organizational resilience by transforming business models through digital innovation and, thus, avoiding the innovator's dilemma.