A Platform Ecosystem View of Servitization in Manufacturing

This study investigates how the social and technical subsystems of a platform ecosystem change and interact with each other in the development and delivery of advanced services. An integrated research approach results in the development of an analytical framework accounting for the four perspectives of - technical core, key actors, structural boundaries and task aspects of a servitization-based platform ecosystem. The study draws from collective experiences of 14 senior executives from seven manufacturing companies using a multiple case study approach. The findings recognise modularity and standardisation as the essential components of the technical core, followed by how servitizing manufacturers redefine service-oriented roles to enable resource integration and value co-creation. Analysis of our findings also reveals that manufacturers concurrently operate across multiple structural boundaries, depending on which they adopt varying mechanisms to govern and orchestrate their actor network. Several theoretical and practical implications are identified.