A proposal for comprehensive «servitization»
integrating the logic of services from a systemic perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24310/Idiseno.2020.v15i0.10576Keywords:
servitization, service logic, service design, service ecosystems, relational business model, integral transformationAbstract
The concept of servitization first appears in 1988 whith the publication of Vandermerwe & Rada’s article (Vandermerwe & Rada, 1988), and it designates the tactic consisting in additioning or infusing services to preexisting offerings, turning them in all sorts of hybrids (PSS type).
Servitization has been used as a business model innovation tool and, as such, it has been adopted by organizations of all kind and sizes, with inconsistent results. Today, such tactic is undergoing a strong scrutiny after several of its proponents backed up and started diluting or removing the services they had previously incorporated.
Far from seeing it as just a tactic to diversify offerings, I posit in this piece for servitization to be considered integrally and applied from the internal organization of the firm all the way to the ecosystem the organization is part of, and, of course, to the services themselves, in order for the company to truly transition from a transactional business model to a relational one.
The tool I believe works best for this business transformation is service design, knowing that it is the discipline that can currently guarantee a systemic adaptation of companies to the new and changing conditions of the socioeconomic environment.
It goes without saying that this conceptual proposal should need a later research applied to specific cases in order to be validated and improved; my intention here is to simply contribute to the discussion by bringing, for lack of a proper academic procedure, a personal perspective that stems from a long exposure to this field of study.
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