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The purpose of this paper is to explore knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS), to understand how they implement their service development (SD) processes and how these processes are related to their knowledge bases (KB) as not enough studies have focussed on the understanding of KIBS heterogeneity, by analysing the nature and essence of these firms’ activities.

The work adopts the case study approach involving 12 KIBS firms with different KB according to Bjorn Asheim and colleagues’ “synthetic, analytical, symbolic model”, which identifies synthetic, analytical and symbolic primary KB.

The research results showed how the SD processes are systemised in KIBS companies depending on the KB. The proposed empirical method for defining KB confirmed the assumed existence of a new type or subtype of KB for legal companies “Compliance/Interpretive”.

Further research, based on a larger number of companies, is needed to confirm or complement the results of this research, as well as to find more methods to define and evaluate KB on an empirical basis.

The correct classification of the applied KB can help a company to create effective processes for developing innovative services, while understanding of knowledge dynamic in general – to organise a working process that corresponds to employees’ needs and is more adaptable to the changes in society.

The study proposed a new empirical method for defining and evaluating KB in KIBS companies based on their SD processes. This study makes a significant contribution to research by identifying knowledge-integration practices needed to enhance innovation performance.

The purpose of this paper is to identify process-related value propositions in terms of process execution when using enterprise social media (ESM) for external communication purposes. Additionally, capabilities of ESM technologies to realize the value propositions are identified.

A literature review of case studies, describing ESM usage for external communication purposes, is performed. Further, face-to-face interviews with employees from companies are conducted to complement the findings retrieved from the literature.

It is shown that manifold process-related value propositions for different business processes can be realized by ESM application for external communication purposes. However, certain value propositions and the corresponding capabilities of ESM technologies are particularly emphasized.

This research is different from existing studies about ESM usage because an explicit perspective on business processes is taken. Therefore, the findings contribute to the existing body of knowledge of beneficial ESM usage. Analyzing the literature and interview transcripts underlies a certain amount of subjectivity, a circumstance addressed by engaging two researchers in the coding procedure.

Practitioners discussing potentials of ESM application are provided with concrete hints as to which business processes will most likely profit from the use of social technologies for the external communication with customers.

This paper contributes to a better understanding of the beneficial impact of social technologies on business processes and thus prepares the ground for a better alignment of ESM and processes. An extensive overview of value propositions for a company’s business processes has so far not been compiled in this form.

This paper aims to identify a manufacturer’s abilities to develop, build, sell and deliver Internet of Things (IoT) services.

This paper is a qualitative comparative case method that uses multiple sources of data, including executive interviews and secondary data, to understand a manufacturer’s IoT capabilities.

Five strategic IoT capabilities were identified: digital business model development, scalable solution platform building, value selling, value delivery and business intelligence and measurement.

The main limitations are related to the qualitative research method applied. The results are applicable mainly to relatively large and global manufacturers.

Managers responsible for solution business development can apply the developed model to acquire and manage IoT specific resources, processes and capabilities.

Existing studies have not addressed the IoT-specific resources, processes and capabilities that manufacturers’ possess. This is one of the first studies to conceptualize how these capabilities are used.

In servitization research, there has been a call to move further toward the development of business models based on a service approach. This article aims to answer this call by adopting service logic (SL) and developing strategies and organizational resources and processes to create a service-centric business model called servification, defined as the process of identifying and developing strategies and organizational resources and processes to create a business model based on SL.

This article is conceptual and extends servitization in the direction of service-centric business model innovation by drawing on and extending SL.

The article defines service as a higher-order concept according to SL and develops the concept of a helping strategy as the foundation for a service-based business model. Further, it develops a typology of organizational resources and processes that must be developed for the emergence of such a business model.

Since this article is the first to conceptually develop servification, more both theoretical and empirical research is naturally required. The development of servification takes servitization in the direction of service-based business model innovation and also contributes to the research on SL.

Servification enables the development of service-centric strategies and organizational resources and processes and service-based business models.

This article is the first to adopt SL in studies of business model innovation.

This paper argues that currently management accounting is simply too narrow and proposes how to broaden its scope to make it more relevant and useful.

The approach is to provide a critique of the extent to which management accounting sufficiently deals with three primary areas that classic management accounting has been myopic about at least to some extent: Organizational control, Organizational measurement, and Intellectual assets.

The paper argues that management accounting has not taken a “deep dive” into these areas and has placed itself at risk of being marginalized. It presents potential frameworks and tools of organizational control, organizational measurement, and intellectual assets as “add-ons” to management accounting to increase its relevance and utility.

The paper shows how management accounting must be broadened to include all organizational measurement and accountability for planning and control.

The paper describes several global applications of the proposed revised frameworks, methodologies, and tools presented as potential add-ons to management accounting. These applications demonstrate the feasibility, utility, and generalizability of the broader management accounting “tool box” presented.

The paper proposes a revised paradigm for management accounting. This paradigm is original and its value is in serving as a catalyst for academics as well as practitioners to rethink and broaden the current paradigm of management accounting in order to be more relevant and useful. It provides a potential new set of tools for management accounting.

This study aims to investigate service modularization in a manufacturing firm, identifies service modularization processes and examines how these processes change the service module characteristics.

The study is based on a longitudinal case study (2008-2017) of a manufacturing firm. The development of six service modules was analyzed using data from interviews with key informants, informal meetings and internal documentation.

This study suggests five service modularization processes, and that service module characteristics, such as standardization and interconnectedness, change in different ways depending on the service modularization processes used. It further identifies two service modularization routes that each combine the service modularization processes in unique ways with replication as a key process to improve both standardization and customization.

This study elaborates a framework for service modularization, which can serve as a guideline for developing service modules. It also highlights the differences between product and service modularization, suggesting that the role of service module characteristics such as standardization and customization is specific for services.

This longitudinal case study (2008-2017) provides empirical evidence on service modularization and extends existing knowledge on service modularization processes and how they influence service module characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what kinds of capabilities are required by process industry companies as they move toward servitization. The authors proceed in two steps. First, the authors explore the capabilities needed in servitization with a qualitative multiple case study. Second, the authors link the identified capabilities to the servitization steps that were derived from prior literature.

Based on earlier servitization literature, the authors build a five-step servitization model for industrial companies. Then, drawing on the empirical study consisting of three focus group sessions with three case companies and 20 interviews in 14 case companies, the authors identify 14 servitization capabilities and link them to the servitization steps.

The study reveals how dynamic capabilities are required in servitization. In contrast to operational capabilities, which are geared toward enabling firms to make a living in the present, dynamic capabilities extend or modify operational capabilities in response to market changes. Based on the empirical study, the authors were able to identify dynamic capabilities for all five steps of servitization: identification of current services and customer needs, determination of a service strategy, creation of new business models and pricing logics, improvements in capabilities, and, ultimately, management services as a separate function.

The current study is exploratory in nature and the number of empirical observations is limited to 14 industrial companies operating in the process industry.

Most importantly, in servitization, companies need dynamic capabilities to transform their operating capabilities in sales and marketing as well as in quantifying and communicating the value created for customers.

The study is the first one to make a link between the capabilities needed and the various stages of servitization and also the first to study the specific context of process industry companies.

Collaboration between universities and industry is increasingly perceived as a vehicle to enhance innovation. Educational institutions are encouraged to build partnerships and multidisciplinary projects based around real-world open problems. Projects need to benefit student learning, not only the organisations looking for innovations. The context of this study is a multidisciplinary innovation project, as experienced by the students of an University of Applied Sciences in Finland. The purpose of this paper is to unfold students’ conceptions of the learning experience, to help teachers and curriculum designers to organise optimal conditions and processes, and support competence development. The research question was: How do students in higher professional education experience their learning in a multidisciplinary innovation project?

The study took a phenomenographic approach. The data were collected in the form of weekly diaries, maintained by the cultural management and social services students (n=74) in a mandatory multidisciplinary innovation project in professional higher education in Finland. The diary data were analysed using thematic inductive analysis.

The results of the study revealed that students’ understood the learning experience in relation to solvable conflicts and unusual situations they experienced during the project, while becoming aware of and claiming their collaborative agency and internalising phases of an innovation process. The competences as learning outcomes that students could name as developed related to content knowledge, different personal characteristics, social skills, emerging leadership skills, creativity, future orientation, social skills, technical, crafting and testing skills and innovation implementation-related skills, such as marketing, sales and entrepreneurship planning skills. However, future orientation and implementation planning skills showed more weakly than other variables in the data.

The findings suggest that curriculum design should enable networked, student-led and teacher supported pedagogical innovation processes that involve a whole path from future thinking and idea development through prototyping to implementation planning of the novel solution. Teachers promote deep comprehension of the innovation process, monitor and ease the pain of conflict if it threatens motivation, offer assessment tools and help in recognising gaps in individual competences and development needs, promote more future-oriented, concrete and implementable outcomes, and facilitate in bridging from innovation towards entrepreneurship planning.

The multidisciplinary innovation project described in this study provides a pedagogical way to connect higher education to the practises of society. These results provide encouraging findings for organising multidisciplinary project activities between education and working life. The paper, therefore, has significant value for teachers and entrepreneurship educators in designing curriculum and facilitating projects. The study promotes the dissemination of innovation development programmes in between education and work organisations also in other than technical and commercial fields.