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This paper studies the Digital Service Innovation (DSI) concept by systematically reviewing earlier studies from various scholarly communities. This study aims to recognize how recent advances in DSI literature from different research streams complement and can be incorporated into the growing digital servitization literature to define better and understand DSI.

After systematically identifying 123 relevant articles, this study employed complementary methods, such as author bibliographic coupling, linguistic text mining/textual analysis and qualitative content analyses.

This paper first maps the intellectual structure and boundaries of the DSI-related communities and qualitatively assesses their characteristics. These communities are (1) Innovation for digital servitization, (2) Service innovation in the digital age and (3) Adoption of novel e-services enabled by information system development. Next, the composition of the DSI concept is examined and depicted to comprehend the notion's critical dimensions. The findings discuss the range of theories and methods in the existing research, including antecedents, processes and outcomes of DSI.

This study reviews, extends the understanding of origins and critically evaluates DSI-related research. Moreover, the paper redefines and clarifies the structure and boundaries of the DSI-concept. In doing so, it elaborates on the substance of DSI and identifies the essential themes for its understanding and conceptualization. Thus, the study helps the future development of the concept and allows knowledge accumulation by bridging adjacent research communities. It helps researchers and managers navigate the foggy emerging research landscape.

Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, this study aims to analyze solution providers’ strategic capabilities that facilitate above-average returns.

The study applies a qualitative comparative case method. In addition to an extensive set of secondary data, the results are based on interviews with 35 executives from nine leading industrial solution providers, their strategic customers and suppliers. The analyzed solution providers were identified based on quantitative survey data.

By observing six distinctive resources and three strategic business processes, the present study identifies seven strategic capabilities that occur in different phases of solution development and deployment: fleet management capability, technology-development capability, mergers and acquisitions capability, value quantifying capability, project management capability, supplier network management capability and value co-creation capability.

The study develops a generic model for the strategic capabilities of servitization. Application of the developed model to different contexts would further validate and enhance it.

Managers can use the developed model to benchmark, identify, build and manage solution providers’ strategic capabilities and associated practices.

The study develops a valuable conceptual model based on the comparative case data. Case firms were selected for the study based on a representative quantitative data set. The results were verified and triangulated with external data.

The present study intends to foster understanding of how a traditional manufacturer can utilize the “simple rules” approach of managerial heuristics to facilitate its smart solution development (SSD) process.

The study uses an in-depth single case research strategy and 25 senior manager interviews to understand the application of simple rules in smart solution development.

The findings reveal process, boundary, preference, schedule, and stop rules as the dominant managerial heuristics in the case and identify how the manufacturer applies these rules during the innovation process phases of ideation, incubation, transformation, and industrialization for attaining project outcomes.

The study contributes to the new service development (NSD) literature by shedding light on simple rules and how managers may apply them to facilitate SSD. The main limitations stem from applying the qualitative case study approach and the interpretative nature of the study, which produces novel insights but prevents direct generalization to other empirical cases.

The resulting framework provides guidelines for managers on how to establish formal and clear simple rules that enable industrial solution providers to approach decision-making in smart solution development in a more agile manner.

The study comprises one of the first attempts to investigate managerial heuristics in the context of SSD and puts forward a plea for further NSD research applying psychological conceptualizations to enrich the simple rules perspective.

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.