a b s t r a c tProductisation relates to the process of analysing a need, defining and combining suitable elements, tangible and/or intangible, into a product-like defined set of deliverables that is standardised, repeatable and comprehendible. This paper clarifies the concept of productisation by surveying the extant literature and reporting the origins, characteristics, benefits and features along with aiming to support future work. The analysed literature is categorised, its content is analysed, and the need for a clear framework is highlighted.The results indicate that productisation has a specific role in addressing the challenges of being able to describe and explain complex, often abstract offerings and producing them, involving activities both to ensure adequate standards and those activities leading to selling the products. A well productised product is easier to buy, sell and market, has stronger features and may enable benefits depending on the product type. Productisation has implications through having a complementary role amongst well established functions and in strengthening the linkage of market needs and engineering-oriented development. The concept requires further development. Potential future research directions are presented.

Digital transformation (DT) refers to the changes in ways of working and business offering caused by adoption of digital technologies in an organization. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are struggling with this transformation because of their limited resources and know-how. Thus, SMEs need practical grassroots-level help for DT that allows the companies to analyze where they stand in digitalization, and how they should proceed. This article discusses how SMEs can be supported in their DT by utilizing the DT model consisting of four consecutive phases for supporting companies’ systematic development of digitalization. The article focuses on the first phase of the DT model, positioning, where company’s digitalization status is analyzed in detail, and development ideas are identified. The positioning phase was conducted for 19 SMEs in Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland. The results indicate that the used process and tools were suitable to support SMEs for analyzing their digitalization status and identifying areas for improvement. The DT model and piloted tools have been published as a free-of-charge ApuaDigiin.fi online service to facilitate their widespread use in the future. In this way, public regional business development authors or research organizations can utilize the online service while supporting the digitalization of SMEs.

Digitalisation has been identified as one of the major trends changing society and business. However, companies are not making the most of all the opportunities that digitalisation has to offer. In the digital transformation process, it is important to start with assessing the current state. Digital maturity assessment can be used to analyse the current level of digital readiness and performance of an organisation. Micro-enterprises are the smallest group of enterprises and numerically the dominant enterprise type in economies. They differ from larger enterprises in terms of organisational characteristics, such as their unique attitude towards digital tools and application deployment. Furthermore, micro-enterprises are lagging behind in exploring the possibilities that come with digitalisation. This article describes the design process, usage possibilities, and initial experiences of a digital maturity model, especially from the viewpoint of micro-enterprises. As result, this article presents a micro-enterprise-focused self-evaluation framework providing holistic digital maturity status.

The purpose this study is to provide tangible examples of the rapid productisation (RP) challenges in high-tech companies in a sales situation. The need to respond quickly to customer preferences in a changing business environment poses new challenges for companies. RP, a new concept originating from practical challenges, seeks to add customer value in the sales negotiation. When an existing product and service portfolio does not satisfy the customer, RP provides a faster alternative to a new product development process. This study supports managers considering RP as an option to better serve customers and to increase agility within the organisation. It explores RP and presents challenges and preconditions for RP in a sales situation.

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The objective of this study is to construct the procedure of business case analysis for rapid productisation. The paper studies the practice of business case analysis to aid collaborative decision making between product management and sales management. Design/Methodology The research is qualitative and constructive in nature. We studied relevant literature and conducted an exploratory case study. Primary data was collected by semi-structured interviews. Business case analysis procedure for rapid productisation is constructed based on the literature study and the interview data analysis. Findings A state of the art practice of analysing rapid productisation opportunities is described. Such an analysis includes estimating and calculating revenue and costs, and checking strategic fit. Especially it includes considering the importance of the customer and the sales case in the revenue side, and project cost and resource reallocation cost. In addition, cost structure and market potential are estimated for the items that decided to include into global portfolio. Originality/Value This study provides insight of the cooperation between sales, R&D and product management in building business case for rapid productisation. The results of the study are applicable for benchmarking similar industrial practices. The study contributes to the research of order delivery process and new product development in the area of rapid productisation.

The aim of this study was to clarify growth management of service-and technology-based firms in sparsely populated areas (SPAs). This retrospective multiple case study reached this aim by investigating ownermanagers' experiences from the early growth process and by reflecting on these experiences through the meta-analytical management priority framework. The contextual management priorities were visited from the perspectives of service-and technology-based companies in SPAs. The owner-managers of service-and tech-based firms paid primary attention to three shared priorities: human resources, the development of services/products and organisational design, but in a different order and with context-specific characteristics. In service-based firms, owner-managers' primary attention was on human resource management; meanwhile, the attention of owner-managers was primarily on the development and delivery of products/technology.