Purpose -This paper consolidates the servitization knowledge base from an organisational change perspective, identifying developed, developing and undeveloped topics to provide a platform that directs future research.Design/methodology/approach -This paper addresses three objectives: a) it comprehensively examines organisational change management literature for selection of a theoretical framework, b) it classifies extant studies within the framework through a systemic literature review, and (c) it analyses 232 selected papers and proposes a research agenda.Findings -Analysis suggests increasing global awareness of the importance of services to manufacturers. However, some topics, especially related to servitization transformation, remain undeveloped.Research limitations/implications -Although the authors tried to include all publications relevant to servitization, some might not have been captured. Evaluation and interpretation relied on the research team and subsequent research workshops.Practical implications -One of the most significant challenges for practitioners of servitization is how to transform a manufacturing organisation to exploit the opportunity. This paper consolidates literature regarding servitization, identifying progress concerning key research topics and contributing a platform for future research. The goal is to inform research to result eventually in a roadmap for practitioners seeking to servitize.Originality/value -Although extant reviews of servitization identify themes that are examined well, they struggle to identify unanswered questions. This paper addresses this gap by focusing on servitization as a process of organisational change.

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Treating the intersection of the strategic partnerships, R&D intensity and servitisation literatures, this study explores empirically whether external collaborative service development and provision and industrial R&D intensity help to unpack the complex relation between product–service innovation (servitisation) and performance. We argue that manufacturing firms implementing services benefit from strategic partnerships with Knowledge‐Intensive Business Service (KIBS) firms. KIBS partnering provides opportunities for downsizing, externalising risks and sharing knowledge. Additionally, manufacturers in R&D‐intensive industries are more likely to benefit from implementing service provision than firms in other sectors because of industry dynamics and reduced customer uncertainty. The study surveys executives in 370 large manufacturers worldwide. Results reinforce the importance of concentric strategic partnerships to successful product–service innovation in high R&D industries.

Servitization represents a business-model change and organizational transformation from selling goods to selling an integrated combination of goods and services. Competitive advantage is one outcome of this shift. During servitization, companies follow stages to realize services as an opportunity to differentiate from goods and achieve higher customer satisfaction. This study analyzes this transition from base, intermediate, and advanced services by presenting results from 102 senior executives in multinational companies. Our results suggest increasing interest in service-led strategies in manufacturing companies. The results also show that increasing differentiation and high customer satisfaction are fundamental to achieving competitive advantage and superior performance with services. The analysis also indicates the importance of a company's position in the value chain and the organizational structure it selects to support services in successful servitization.

For manufacturing firms, the integration of advanced services into their customer offerings has become a crucial decision. Such commercial decisions require weighting the risks and rewards of implementing a business model based on advanced services. While academic experts acknowledge uncertainty of returns on investment despite potential advantages, research generally fails to address the challenge of calculating the actual risks involved in 'servitization'. This paper seeks better understanding of managers' risk perception and of servitization implications for strategic partnerships and network positioning, while considering the impact of factors such as entry barriers, technological knowledge and position in the supply chain (SC). Qualitative evidence is drawn from an industrial case study involving firms in the UK's road transport industry: fourteen in-depth interviews with senior executives from seven companies (manufacturers, operators, technology providers). During interviews, a payment card exercise measured risk perception and willingness to take strategic 'make-or-buy' decisions. Results suggest that implementing advanced services is perceived as a high-risk strategy, especially when firms lack in-house technological knowledge. However, collaborative strategic partnerships within supply chain networks can mitigate this risk and prove crucial to building entry barriers against external competitors. Based on these findings, implications for network positioning are developed.

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Product firms implementing integrated product/service solutions through in-house development must have a long-term commitment to the project and focus on enhancing their resource base and strategic agility. Our results confirm the importance of organizational capabilities and strong firm commitment to the development of integrated solutions. While previous studies have demonstrated the importance of the service business unit's configuration, this article identifies critical variables (the firm's strategic agility and capability) that influence make-or-buy decisions.Agility is a prerequisite for digital organizational transformation, and our results corroborate that weak firm agility is closely linked to the need for external development of integrated solutions.

This research examines firm boundary configurations for manufacturers' product-service offerings. We argue that the building of a product-service ecosystem through collaboration with service providers in certain types of business services can increase business and organizational performance as a result of the superior knowledge-based servitization resources coming from specialized partners. By using fuzzy set qualitative analysis on a sample of 370 multinational manufacturing enterprises (MMNEs), the results reveal that effective servitization is heterogeneous across manufacturing industries and across business service offerings. The findings indicate that most industries achieve their highest performance through collaborations with value-added service providers in two out of three of the service continuum stages (Base and Intermediate services); while keeping the development of Advanced services in-house. The results help to contextualize the best practices for implementing service business models in MMNEs by detailing which service capabilities should be retained in-house and which should be outsourced to specialized partners in various industrial contexts.