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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.

In this chapter, we explore the impact of socioemotional and financial wealth on the resource management of family firms. We use MoDo, a Swedish pulp and paper firm, covering three generations of owner-managers from 1873 to 1991, to grasp the shifting emphases on socioemotional and financial wealth in the management of the company. Identifying four strategic issues of decisive importance for the development of MoDo, we analyze the organizational values that guided the management of these issues. We propose that financial and socioemotional wealth stand for two different rationalities that infuse organizational values. The MoDo case illustrates how these rationalities go hand in hand for extended periods of time, safeguarding both financial success and socioemotional endowments. However, in a situation where the rationalities are no longer in line with the development of the industry context, the conflict arising between the two rationalities may have fatal consequences for the firm in question.

Smart industry initiatives focus on intelligent and interconnected cyber-physical systems. These initiatives develop complex technical architectures that integrate heterogenous technologies, causing significant organizational complexity. Tapping into the digital capabilities of distant partners while capturing profit from such innovation is demanding. Furthermore, firms often need to establish and orchestrate inter-organizational collaborations without prior relations or established trust. As a result, smart industry initiatives bring together disparate organizational forms and institutional environments, distinctive knowledge bases, and geographically dispersed organizations. We conceptualize this organizational capability as ‘distant capabilities integration’. This research explores the governance mechanisms that support such integration and their relation to value capture. We analyse 11 IoT case studies organized in three categories (process, product and technologies) of smart industry initiatives. Building on existing literature, we consider different ways to describe distance, including knowledge heterogeneity and organizational, geographical, institutional, cultural and cognitive distance. Finally, we describe the governance mode appropriate for upstream (developing foundational technologies) and downstream (leveraging existing distant technologies) smart industry initiatives.

While a radical innovation can be embedded in new products or new processes, most studies to date have concentrated on barriers to radical product innovations, with little insights available about the challenges for implementation of radical process innovations.

We theorize a set of barriers to radical process innovation based on a critical case study of an oil company. Our study employs data from 14 semi-structured interviews, one complete participant-observer in the process and access to all corporate documentation. The organization being studied was eventually unable to bring the new process technology to commercialization despite the technology having both technical feasibility and substantive cost savings potential.

We identify five groups of challenges that the company faced: (1) challenges in resource mobilization, (2) challenges in piloting strategy, (3) innovation leadership tensions, (4) tensions in managing shareholders' expectations and (5) product-process innovation tension (i.e. a unique situation when a company implementing a radical process innovation and simultaneously pursues the path to commercialize it as a product innovation).

Sustainable development is one of the major challenges in our era. Process innovations are crucial for achieving sustainability without changing the final product. By providing a list of challenges that executives face in the process of commercializing a radical process innovation, we can help them to achieve sustainability more effectively.

The paper responds to the call to increase our understanding of radical process innovations by utilizing a unique ethnographic research methodology of active participant-observation complemented by independent third-party face-to-face interviews.

Unlike traditional industries, the e-cigarette is an epoch-making innovative product originating in China and occupying an absolute competitive advantage in the international market. The traditional A-U model describes the laws and characteristics of technological innovation in developed countries. In contrast, the inverse A-U model depicts the process of “secondary innovation” in late-developing countries through digestion and absorption. This paper aims to find out that if the e-cigarette, as a “first innovation” industry in a late-developing country, conform to the A-U model or conform to the “inverse A-U model”.

This paper takes the patent data of e-cigarettes from 2004 to 2021 as the research object, and uses Python’s Jieba segment words to divide product innovation and process innovation, and then uses statistical analysis methods to conduct empirical analyses on these data.

Thus, an improved A-U model suitable for the e-cigarette industry is proposed. In this model, product innovation in the e-cigarette industry appeared earlier than process innovation, but the synchronous development of product and process innovation is not lagging. The improved A-U model in the e-cigarette industry is not only different from the traditional A-U model but also does not conform to the inverse A-U model.

It is conducive to expanding and clarifying the theoretical contribution and applicable boundaries of the A-U model and has sparked thinking and exploration of the A-U model in e-cigarettes and emerging industries.

On this basis, suggestions on the development path and countermeasures of the e-cigarette industry are put forward.

Based on the e-cigarette industry, this paper takes patents as the research object and provides the method of dividing product innovation and process innovation, and proposes an A-U model suitable for the e-cigarette industry on this basis. By comparing the traditional A-U model with the inverse A-U model in latecomer countries, the background and causes of e-cigarette A-U model heterogeneity are analyzed from different stages and overall morphology. Based on this, the heterogeneity characteristics of e-cigarette innovation are summarized and sorted out.

A perceived uniqueness of real estate (RE) projects has led to a view among RE practitioners that since no two RE projects are the same, they must all follow their own unique set of processes. Further, local exigencies often result in the very processes agreed at the beginning of every project being changed, thereby making projects unpredictable for delivery within time and budget, or to the standards of quality expected. Maintaining the need to follow pre-defined standard processes in RE operations, the purpose of this paper is to focus on two converging tracks: the first track studies available sector-level competitiveness frameworks appropriate for RE to formulate RE sector objectives; and the second track retains the process standardisation perspective to comprehensively identify a set of factors that influence the defined sector objectives.

The research methodology adopted comprises, respectively, for the two tracks, a focussed literature review and semi-structured interviews with 30 Indian RE sector practitioners working at levels of consequence, supported by qualitative interpretive analysis. As a sustained development requires all stakeholders to have their concerns addressed, this research leads to the formulation of four sector objectives, one for each stakeholder group identified. Furthermore, two sets of factors (inhibiting and enabling) are deduced from stakeholder interviews reinforced by secondary literature as those that would influence the realisation of the objectives from the standpoint of processes and their standardisation.

It is thought that factors identified here will inform actionable strategies for a transformation to the long-elusive process and standards-based delivery in the Indian RE sector. Such strategies will not only lead to the next spate of improvements from innovative processes and standards thereof but will also equip RE players with the wherewithal to successfully engage globally.

This work extends the earlier research to shift from a function to process orientation in RE and bridges research gaps in each of the tracks mentioned above: the articulation of RE sector objectives, and identification of factors influencing the objectives.

The paper seeks to investigate the applicability of strategic supply chain management (SCM) models in one-off luxury contexts such as the yacht industry, where durable products are manufactured with project configuration.

A literature review was assessed in order to identify contingency-based SCM models. Then, multiple case-study analysis was performed to explore how these models are adopted in practice for drawing strategic SCM directions. Data arose from a number of interviews to the top-management of four world-leading yacht-building companies.

The findings of explorative case studies suggest the implementation of various strategic SCM strategies in order to fit the requirements of the market (e.g. protect critical resources, implement a customized leagile production strategy, enhance SC flexibility). In this direction, specific SCM practices are already adopted by investigated firms.

A call to develop specific strategic directions for project-based luxury business is suggested, as the SC contingencies of this context have not been properly caught by extant literature.

A set of practical indications are offered in order to support managers in the choice of an appropriate SCM approach and related operational practices. Identified techniques and tools aim to achieve high customisation while reducing changes in specification.

This article represents a first attempt to investigate the SCM issue for durable luxury products in the project context.

While research has identified potential benefits of specific technology development practices, the literature has largely failed to identify the contextual issues that influence these practices. This paper explores the contextual differences of plants to better understand what types of companies place more emphasis on process technology and have a more disciplined approach to product development. We propose a theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between the context in which a plant operates and the process technology and the product development practices used within the plant. We test this framework using data from 163 plants to determine what types of companies are most likely to emphasize process technology and product development at the plant level. Our results indicate that environmental, organizational and strategic contextual factors are important to the technology practices of a plant.

Lean construction is a technique that aims at reducing waste in construction and maximizing productivity. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the effectiveness of Lean technique in managing construction projects.

A case study of structural steel erection project was chosen where the value stream mapping lean tool is applied and the possible improvement in productivity was observed. The current state of the activities in the erection process was mapped first which was followed by preparing the Future State Map of the activities after eliminating the non-value adding tasks.

The modifications from Future State Map were carried out at the project and the results exhibited a substantial increase in productivity by reducing the project duration by 13 days which is about 30 per cent savings from the expected completion time after the implementation of Lean technique.

Traditionally lean concept has been widely used in process-oriented manufacturing industry whereas it is relatively new to the project-oriented construction industry. This current research has focused on applying lean tool to a real time construction project at the site level and measuring its outcome practically. The results of this study are real and affirm the effectiveness of applying lean concept to construction projects. It will be major paradigm shift in terms of managing construction projects.