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.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to contribute a framework that explains how value is formed during the usage of immersive technologies in industrial contexts.

Design/methodology/approach - Drawing on activity theory and a customer-dominant logic, the authors tentatively develop an activity-centric framework for value formation enabled by physical and mental activities conducted by users of immersive technologies. The authors evaluate the framework through a case study focusing on the use of virtual reality (VR) in an industrial setting.

Findings - The findings from the case study illustrate the tentative framework and specify how it is enacted by users in the studied context through three physical activities constituted by a set of actions and reflected in five emotional responses.

Research limitations/implications - Both researchers and practitioners may use the framework presented in this paper as a guide for further academic and practical developments concerning the value of immersive technologies such as VR and augmented reality.

Originality/value - The activity-centric framework contributes a novel perspective to the literature on value formation enabled by immersive technologies.

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.

As digitalisation increasingly encompasses entire service ecosystems, it modifies resource integration patterns that connect ecosystem actors through strong and weak ties. To clarify how technological development contributes to this change, and how resource integration transforms the service ecosystem, this qualitative case study explores the digitalisation strategy of a market-leading systems integrator in the maritime industry. Based on 40 depth interviews with managers, the findings show how technology increasingly serves as a key operant resource in the transformation of resource integration patterns. The study contributes to ecosystem dynamics research by identifying major differences between the pre-digitalised and digitalised states of a service ecosystem, and demonstrates the dual role of technology in both increasing pattern complexity and facilitating coordination of that complexity.

Harnessing digital technology is of increasing concern as product firms organize for service-led growth. Adopting a service ecosystem perspective, we analyze interfirm and intrafirm change processes taking place as firms pursue digital servitization. The study draws on in-depth interviews with 44 managers involved in organizing activities in two multinational industry leaders. Our findings identify major differences between the two focal firms in terms of digital service-led growth and associated ecosystem-related activities. The study disentangles underlying processes of organizational change in the ecosystem and suggests that within-firm centralization and integration play a key role in the capacity to organize for digital servitization. For managers, the findings highlight the need to foster service-centricity in order to take full advantage of digitalization beyond purely technological benefits.

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.

This chapter illuminates the challenges of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face when transforming to digital servitization. It is suggested that to embrace and overcome these challenges; the SME needs to undergo three transformational shifts: dematerialization, identity, and collaboration. The enabler for these shifts is SMEs' closeness to their customers and that they thus have a good understanding of their customers' (and customers' customers) needs. It is also the collaboration shift with the most substantial possibilities as SMEs are used to coordinate activities with other actors. The biggest challenge is to make the dematerialization shift - separate information from the physical world - as it usually requires a high level of technical competencies and financial strength. The identity shift might also be hard for SMEs, as organizational culture has been proven to be relatively resistant to change.

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.

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.

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.