Department of Business Development and Technology

This paper identifies a fundamental ambiguity in the definitions of servitization and, consequently, the perception of servitization success. The aim is to discuss paradoxes emerging from such diverse perception, and illuminate the external and internal tensions resulting from the paradoxes. The paper seeks to establish a more profound understanding of the servitization concept, and to shed light on the definitional diversities to promote coherence within future research.

To map the existing perspectives of servitization success, a systematic literature review unfolds a fine-grained theoretical discussion. The paper conducts a typology- based conceptualization to embrace prior studies on the construct ́success ́ in relation to definitional differences. The study conceptualizes new approaches to understand servitization success. The novelty is the revised methodological view of servitization success emerging from the identified definitions, which has the potential to inform future studies.