Competences in digital servitization: a new framework

This paper contributes to the research on servitization in manufacturing companies. Its main purpose is to describe and explain how the evolving technological landscape is influencing the skills that companies seek for facilitating the service growth. Grounded on the actual knowledge on this topic, this study presents some preliminary findings from an on-going research, that focus on the impacts of digital transformation on competences and capabilities of manufacturers. To this concern, this paper is also part of the broader set of studies on the forth industrial revolution (I4.0), and on the changes to organization of manufacturing firms due to the raise of digital business and smart products, smart services, smart workplace, etc. The main contributions of this research are twofold: first we propose a theoretical framework that - based on the review of the existing literature – sheds lights on the trends of “digital servitization”. Second, we explore the competences that support the digital servitization (i.e. “digital competences”). To achieve this latter objective, we carried out interviews with CEOs, HR and service managers of companies undergoing servitization and digital transformation. This study also provides avenues for further research dealing with competences for the I4.0 revolution.