Responding to significant market changes, many industrial companies have been pursuing the strategy of ‘servitization’, i.e. transition from selling products to selling an integrated products and service offering that delivers value in use. Once undergone the first step in the process of servitization by adding simple after-sales service to their goods, the company can continue the transition towards more complex solutions.A fundamental premise of this paper is that service transition is regarded as an example of strategic flexibility in practice. However, in spite of the abundant literature on servitization, it remains largely disconnected from the literature on flexibility. The purpose of this paper is thus to explore the industrial companies’ transition towards services as strategic flexibility in practice and to expand the field of industrial service research by infusing ideas from another discipline. The parallels are drawn between strategic challenges of servitization and certain aspects of strategic flexibility, such as sources, antecedents, and market-focused strategic flexibility. A qualitative empirical study is presented, testing the propositions developed from the merge of the concepts. The paper thus opens new dimensions to understanding of the concept of servitization.