Digital technology continues to extend the co-creative role of users and user communities as sources of innovation-conducive knowledge. While the potential of user communities in this context is well established, little is known about the capabilities needed to successfully manage the interface with virtual user communities. The paper investigates User Community Sensing (UCS) capability as a measure of firms’ ability to anticipate changes and opportunities for innovation by interfacing with relevant user communities. Based on existing research and data from 173 product innovation projects, the study employs structural equation modelling to test the hypothesised effects of this capability on product innovation performance and product innovation speed. The results indicate that UCS capability affects performance positively and indirectly by increasing knowledge about users but has no significant effect on speed. As well as contributing to the literature on innovation management, the study has a number of implications for practitioners.

Two of the most disruptive changes in today's business markets are servitization and digitalization. Their increasing convergence into digital servitization leads to tensions both within and between organizations. The authors investigate such intra- and interorganizational tensions by applying a paradox theory lens. The study draws on 56 depth interviews and multiple site visits from two cases in the aerospace and maritime industries. Linked to the paradoxes of organizing, learning, belonging, and performing, eight tensions emerge from the findings. The intra-organizational tensions include digitally enabled control, digital upkeep, professional identity, and performance priorities. In turn, the interorganizational tensions comprise platform-based coopetition, information superabundance, organizational identity, and data utilization. For practitioners working with digital services, this study suggests an audit of tensions to inform continued formulations of a mitigation strategy.

In this chapter, the authors argue that, in the absence of a clear management focus on how data will create value for customers, the incumbent firm’s digital servitization journey will fail. What is required is a purposeful and coordinated effort to manage the firm’s strong and weak business relationships. Hence, it is a journey that goes beyond the individual firm and encompasses integration of resources among actors embedded within a larger structure, the service ecosystem. Incumbent firms need to recognise that going digital does not mean they can cut all of their strong “analogue” links; they need to investigate which ones will continue to be important to create value for their customers. Otherwise, the firm risks becoming data-driven but lacking any contextual competences, knowledge or skills related to solving customers’ problems. A digital servitization transformation requires maintenance of a balance between weak and strong relationships linked to creating value for – and with – customers.

The authors argue in this chapter that business model innovations need to be linked to continuous technological innovation. The video games industry is a good example of the intertwining of these aspects over time. External technological advancements can force firms to adjust their business models, but, in some cases, the technology needs to be adapted to fit the current business model innovation. The authors show that business model innovation, related to a digitally transformed industry, mostly involves subscription-based revenue streams linked to cloud-based technologies. The insights from this chapter should help other industries undergoing digital transformation to reformulate their business model innovations in similar ways. The music (Spotify), movie (Netflix) and photography (Instagram) sectors can be considered forerunners in the context of for business model innovation in a digitally transformed era.

Research on engagement has shifted to a systemic, rather than a dyadic, view that considers the engagement of multiple actors in complex business settings. Existing literature suggests that actor engagement in business settings is dependent on, and inextricably linked with, service ecosystems, platforms, and the value co-creation process. However, despite its potential to deliver strong performance for organizations, actor engagement in complex business settings has yet to be examined empirically. To gain a deeper understanding of engagement dynamics in these settings, this qualitative study explores the evolution of actor engagement on a platform. The findings offer three main contributions: (i) a typology of three organizing modes of engagement (orchestrating, facilitating, and stimulating), (ii) an understanding of the modular architecture that supports actor engagement within clearly defined rules of exchange, and (iii) insight into engagement activity over time reveals that actors’ engagement states oscillate between object or subject of engagement.

Manufacturers increasingly look to digitalization to drive service growth. However, success is far from guaranteed, and many firms focus too much on technology. Adopting a discovery-oriented, theories-in-use approach, this study examines the strategic organizational shifts that underpin digital servitization. Notwithstanding strong managerial and academic interest, this link between digitalization and servitization is still under-investigated. Depth interviews with senior executives and managers from a global market leader revealed that to achieve digital service-led growth, a firm and its network need to make three interconnected shifts: (1) from planning to discovery, (2) from scarcity to abundance, and (3) from hierarchy to partnership. Organizational identity, dematerialization, and collaboration play a key role in this transformation. For managers, the study identifies a comprehensive set of strategic change initiatives needed to ensure successful digital servitization.