Preliminary analysis on the enabling role of digital technologies and platform strategy for the servitization of companies

Emerging business trends such as globalization and the increasing request for more customized offers by users and customers have pushed companies towards changing their strategy from the production and sales of single physical products, to the provision of customer-centric solutions (Tuli et al. 2007; Storbacka, 2011). A literature stream refers to this change with the term servitization (Vandermerwe and Rada, 1988). Moreover the diffusion of digitalization has the potentialities to support this transformation helping companies in the development and provision of customer-centric solutions (Kowalkowski, Kindström and Gebauer, 2013). These developments are also paralleled by the development of ecosystems of actors collaborating in the creation and delivery of an integrated solution through a shared industry-platform (Gawer and Cusumano, 2014). The objective of this paper is to describe the preliminary results of an on-going research program aimed at understanding the benefits achieved in service provision by the exploitation of specific digital technologies and the opportunity of offering more complex solution adopting a platform developed thanks a business ecosystem.