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Digital servitization concerns how manufacturers utilize digital technologies to enhance their provision of services. Although digital servitization requires that manufacturers possess new capabilities, in contrast to strategic (or dynamic) capabilities, little is known about how they develop the required operational capabilities. The paper investigates the mechanisms for developing operational capabilities in digital servitization.

This paper presents an exploratory study based on 15 large manufacturers operating in Europe engaged in digital servitization.

Three operational capability development mechanisms are set out that manufacturers use to facilitate digital servitization: learning (developing capabilities in-house), building (bringing the requisite capabilities into the manufacturer), and acquiring (utilizing the capabilities of other actors). These mechanisms emphasize exploitation and exploration efforts within manufacturers and in collaborations with upstream and downstream partners. The findings demonstrate the need to combine these mechanisms for digital servitization according to combinations that match each manufacturer’s traditional servitization phase: (1) initial phase - building and acquiring, (2) middle phase - learning, building and acquiring, and (3) advanced phase - learning and building.

This study reveals three operational capability development mechanisms, highlighting the parallel use of these mechanisms for digital servitization. It provides a holistic understanding of operational capability development mechanisms used by manufacturers by combining three theoretical perspectives (organizational learning, absorptive capacity, and network perspectives). The paper demonstrates that digital servitization requires the significant application of building and acquiring mechanisms to develop the requisite operational capabilities.

This paper addresses the growing fragmentation between traditional and digital service innovation (DSI) research and offers a unifying metatheoretical framework.

Grounded in service-dominant (S-D) logic's service ecosystems perspective, this study builds on an institutional and systemic, rather than product-centric and linear, conceptualization of value creation to offer a unifying framework for (digital) service innovation that applies to both physical and digital service provisions.

This paper questions the commonly perpetuated idea that DSI fundamentally changes the nature of innovation. Instead, it highlights resource liquification—the decoupling of information from the technologies that store, transmit, or process this information—as a distinguishing characteristic of DSI. Liquification, however, does not affect the relational and institutional nature of service innovation, which is always characterized by (1) the emergence of novel outcomes, (2) distributed governance and (3) symbiotic design. Instead, liquification makes these three characteristics more salient.

In presenting a cohesive service innovation framework, this study underscores that all innovation processes are rooted in combinatorial evolution. Here, service-providing actors (re)combine technologies (or more generally, institutions) to adapt their value cocreation practices. This research demonstrates that such (re)combinations exhibit emergence, distributed governance and symbiotic design. While these characteristics may initially seem novel and unique to DSI, it reveals that their fundamental mechanisms are not limited to digital service ecosystems. They are, in fact, integral to service innovation across virtual, physical and blended contexts. The study highlights the importance of exercising caution in assuming that the emergence of novel technologies, including digital technologies, necessitates a concurrent rethinking of the fundamental processes of service innovation.

This study examines how the world's largest business-to-business (B2B) firms communicated about coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on LinkedIn during the first months of the pandemic. A Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) framework (Coombs, 2004) is used to assess how pandemic message themes resembled and differed from those utilized in past crises.

Researchers examined all LinkedIn posts made by the 20 largest global B2B firms during February–October 2020 and assigned the posts to five message themes.

Consistent with past crises, firms conveyed “instructing” information designed to help social media followers cope. However, some businesses also promoted products for use in dealing with COVID-19. This stands in contrast to past reluctance to promote products during a crisis due to fears of being viewed as acting inappropriately. Surprisingly, only about 9% of all posts related to COVID-19.

Research focused on the LinkedIn posts of the 20 largest B2B firms, limiting generalizability for smaller firms and for other social networks.

This study provides insights into how marketers can communicate to their stakeholders during a crisis.

This study examines how reaction to COVID-19 was similar and different from message themes found during previous crises.

This study is one of the first to examine how businesses use LinkedIn to communicate with key constituencies. This study examines whether SCCT predicted strategies used by global B2B firms during the pandemic and considers whether expectations regarding crises may be changing.