"Driving Competitiveness through Servitization” – an Danish Industry Foundation and CBS applied research project for Danish firms

”Driving Competitiveness through Servitization”

– a Danish Industry Foundation and CBS applied research project for Danish firms

The current global competitive environment with increasing focus on the provision of services is putting tremendous pressure on manufacturing companies.

Mads Lebech, CEO, The Danish Industry Foundation says: “Danish companies are facing intensified global competition, not least from powerful emerging economies. This calls for innovation and new solutions, based on existing Danish strengths. Servitization, where manufacturing companies are selling services as part of their offering, can become a strategy for increasing financial margins for Danish industries”.

This new 4-year CBS project financed by The Danish Industry Foundation expands on what was achieved during a pre-project during spring 2014. It explored and explained challenges that pushed for servitization, different forms of servitization, processes for developing servitization, and key challenges in implementing servitization. All is summarized in a free to download practical step-by-step handbook. Subsequently, a couple of companies started to develop their servitization concepts out of this.

Professor Christer Karlsson of CBS: “Now the researchers will work closely with many Danish companies to develop value propositions and processes for implementing servitization, both in the short and long run. It will involve both large and small companies with varying types of core businesses, ranging from original equipment manufacturers to suppliers and sub-suppliers of components and materials”.

The collaboration between researchers and companies take place within three themes: 1) Servitization as a global competitive strategic response - why embark on servitization? 2) Design and innovation for servitization – what is needed to realize servitization? 3) The processes of servitization transformation – how to implement servitization? Participating companies will gain from the increased direct servitization activities as well as the share of revenues generated through services as well as increased profitability.

Several approaches are used to develop the skills of the companies to develop and implement servitization: 1) Mapping and knowledge sharing between companies, 2) Case studies in which the researchers explore servitization in the companies and participate in the development, 3) Action research in which the researcher is active in the company’s servitization process implementing the concepts and models from the theory of servitization, and 4) In-depth longitudinal field studies in which a researcher is embedded in servitization projects in the company.

Dissemination activities are expected to reach 200 companies with around 15 case studies and one or more longitudinal field studies in addition to mapping and sharing knowledge of the experiences of servitization of Danish industry. In total the project is allocated a funding of 8.000.000 DKK for 4 years (October 2014 –2018).

Contacts

Christer Karlsson, Professor, Academic Director, CBS Competitiveness Platform, tel. 3815 2387

Mads Lebech, CEO, The Danish Industry Foundation, tel. 70 209 208