Significant advancements within the fields of digitalization, electrification, and automation have enabled the development, testing, and implementation of increasingly advanced autonomous solutions. Current examples of industrial automation promise significant economic and sustainability-oriented benefits for industrial customers. Yet, implemented autonomous solutions have rarely advanced beyond ‘islands of autonomy’. Although enabling initial improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of operations, they have not led to the systemic process improvements that fully integrated site-wide solutions can achieve. It is becoming increasingly clear that the major challenges in this shift extend beyond technology to focus on business transformation and ecosystem relationships. Yet, extant research offers few insights into these domains. There is a need to develop a business-focused maturity framework for autonomous solutions to contribute to a predominantly technical discourse and support equipment actors and their wider ecosystems in commercializing autonomous solutions. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how industrial equipment manufacturers can align the development of technology, business models and ecosystem relationships for the advancement of autonomous solutions. We build on case studies that include 32 interviews from four industrial equipment manufacturers and their extended ecosystems of customers and partners. We capture our findings in a three-level maturity framework for industrial autonomous solutions. This framework unwraps the attributes of each level from the perspectives of technical system development, ecosystem configuration, and business model design and is complemented by three overarching principles for the successful commercialization of autonomous solutions.

Background and purpose: Digital technologies are enabling the transformation of manufacturing companies from being a product provider to a service provider, a trend that is referred to as ‘digital servitization’. Providers typically adopt a digital servitization strategy to differentiate themselves from competitors, create new revenue streams, and unlock new value creation opportunities for their industrial customers. Though, for realizing the benefits of digital servitization, a key challenge is related to adapting industrial relationships to a state where value is increasingly created by digital rather than physical component. However, current knowledge about this is lacking. More specifically, there is a need to investigate how provider-customer relationships are transformed, as a shift from transactional to relational interaction is needed. A further complicating factor that emerges in digital servitization is that relationships tend to extend beyond provider-customer relationship and spreads across ecosystems of multiple actors, including equipment providers, digitalization partners, besides customers. This creates various challenges, as providers have to secure their roles in an ecosystem where they may have to simultaneously cooperate and compete. Therefore, there is a need to investigate how ecosystem relationships are configured. This thesis adopts the theoretical lens of the relational view (Dyer et al., 2018; Dyer & Singh, 1998) to advance understanding of how industrial relationships develop for digital servitization. More specifically, the purpose is divided into two research questions: 1) How can provider-customer relationships be transformed for digital servitization?, 2) How can a provider configure ecosystem relationships for digital servitization?. 

Research methods: A qualitative case study methodology was adopted, and cases were selected based on theoretical sampling. Data was mainly collected through semi-structured interviews with company informants, supplemented by secondary data. Data was analyzed following the method of Gioia et al. (2013).

 Findings: The thesis integrates the findings of five papers into a ‘relational framework for digital servitization’. The framework draws on the relational view theory, which suggests four determinants of inter-organizational competitive advantage: complementary resources and capabilities, relation-specific assets, knowledge-sharing routines, and effective governance (Dyer et al., 2018; Dyer & Singh, 1998). The four determinants are conceptualized for the context of digital servitization and used as theoretical lens to synthesize the findings into two layers. First, from a provider-customer perspective, the findings show that it should transform to one that is based on co-creation logic with a long term-perspective, and the framework underlines four principles in this endeavor. From an ecosystem perspective, the findings show that the ecosystem should be centered on a focal value proposition (digital service) targeted at a specific industrial customer, and providers need to align activities for interdependent value creation with other actors. The framework suggests four principles to that end. 

Contributions and implications: This thesis contributes to the emerging literature on digital servitization by developing processes and overarching principles for transforming provider-customer relationships. The thesis also contributes to the growing body of literature on innovation ecosystems by demonstrating the central role of ecosystem alignment in digital servitization and suggesting frameworks and principles for configuring ecosystem strategies based on assessing the context. Furthermore, the thesis contributes by emphasizing the interplay between technology development, ecosystem configuration, and business model design in digital servitization. Besides its theoretical contributions, this thesis has implications for managers who are active in digital servitization efforts in manufacturing firms and digital services providers, in addition to managers in firms pursuing the procurement of digital services. 

Digitalization offers new opportunities for equipment suppliers to support the competitiveness of process industry firms through participating in digitally enabled process-innovation initiatives. However, doing so is not without challenges as it requires equipment suppliers to align with multiple actors within an extended ecosystem to deliver complex product-service software systems as embodied sources of process innovation. This creates various challenges for the equipment supplier because it has to secure its role in an ecosystem where it must simultaneously cooperate and compete with other ecosystem actors. Therefore, it needs to consciously determine what ecosystem strategy to apply. Using multiple exploratory case studies, we investigate how equipment suppliers configure appropriate ecosystem strategies to realize digitally enabled process innovation for process industry firms. Our findings emphasize that different industrial customer contexts require different ecosystem strategies; we have identified four archetypical ecosystem strategies (orchestrator, dominator, complementor, and protector). The core insights from our research are converted into a decision tree framework to guide equipment suppliers in configuring the appropriate ecosystem strategy based on the industrial customer context. Key contingency considerations include determining an appropriate role in the ecosystem (leader or follower) and a suitable coopetitive approach (cooperation dominated or competition dominated).

To profit from digitalization, industrial relationships shift from transactional product-centric model to relational service-oriented engagement – a trend that is referred to as digital servitization. To transform their relationships, providers and customers should consider four relational components: complementary digitalization capabilities, relation-specific digital assets, digitally enabled knowledge-sharing routines, and partnership governance. This article offers guidance and presents a relational transformation framework for digital servitization.

Digitalization is viewed as a source of future competitiveness due to its potential for unlocking new value-creation and revenue-generation opportunities. To profit from digitalization, providers and customers tend to move away from transactional product-centric model to relational service-oriented engagement. This relational transformation is brought about through digital servitization. However, current knowledge about how providers and customers transform their relationship to achieve benefits from digital servitization is lacking. This paper addresses that knowledge gap by applying the relational view theory to a study of four provider-customer relationships engaged in digital servitization. The results provide evidence for four relational components – complementary digitalization capabilities, relation-specific digital assets, digitally enabled knowledge-sharing routines, and partnership governance – that enable providers and customers to profit from digital servitization. A key contribution is the development of a relational transformation framework for digital servitization that provides an overview of how the four relational components evolve as the relationship progresses. In doing so, we contribute to the emerging servitization literature by offering key relational insights into the interdependence of activities throughout the transformation phases of provider-customer relationships in digital servitization.

Providers are increasingly leveraging digitalization and offering their industrial customers more advanced services which are enabled by digital technologies such as the internet of things, remote monitoring, big data analytics, and artificial intelligence. This trend is referred to as digital servitization, and it is enabling significant changes in how value is created and captured in industrial relationships. In order to fully benefit from digital servitization, providers and customers need to transform their relationships. However, there is limited knowledge on how a provider and a customer govern their dyad relationship in the context of digital servitization. To address this gap, this paper applies the relational view theory as a lens for the purpose of studying how dyad relationships in digital servitization can be successfully governed by parties involved. To that end, research was conducted based on multiple case study of four dyad relationships between Swedish providers and customers that are actively involved in digital servitization. In total, 40 respondents from seven companies were interviewed, and data was analyzed based on thematic analysis approach to identify relevant themes and patterns. Although data collection followed an inductive approach, data aligned with the four determinants of interogranizational competitive advantage suggested by the relational view: complementary resources and capabilities, relation-specific assets, knowledge-sharing routines, and effective governance. The results of this study demonstrate that these determinants have great influence for governing relationships between the provider and customer in digital servitization. This paper provides theoretical contribution to servitization literature by highlighting the importance of relationship governance, and how this is gradually transformed as the relationship develops. This transformation is illustrated in a stepwise framework that can also guide managers in prioritizing activities and investments, and developing governance mechanisms to advance their business relationships in digital servitization context.

In the light of industry 4.0, providers are increasingly offering their industrial customers more advanced services enabled by digital technologies such as the internet of things, remote monitoring, and artificial intelligence. This trend is referred to as digital servitization, and it is enabling significant changes in how value is created and captured in industrial relationships. In order to fully benefit from digital servitization, providers and customers need to transform their relationships. However, there is limited knowledge on how a provider and a customer govern their relationship in the context of digital servitization. To address this gap, this paper applies the relational view theory as a lens for studying how dyad relationships in digital servitization can be successfully governed and transformed. To that end, research was conducted based on multiple case study of four dyadic relationships between providers and customers. In total, 40 respondents from both sides were interviewed, and data was analyzed based on thematic analysis approach to identify relevant themes and patterns. The results identify four components – complementary digitalization capabilities, relation-specific digital assets, digitally enabled knowledge-sharing routines, and partnership governance – that enable providers and customers to profit from digital servitization. The main contribution is the development of a relational governance framework for digital servitization. In doing so, we provide contribute to the servitization literature, as we advance understanding of the central role of relationship governance in digital servitization, and provide insights into the transformation of provider-customer relationships.

Digitalization or industry 4.0 holds the potential of providing many benefits to industrial companies. Industrial customers are increasingly focusing on buying digitally enabled advanced services, i.e. integrated solutions that combine products and service functions with digital capabilities. However, traditional procurement processes are not well designed for evaluating and buying digitally enabled advanced services, which inhibits value co-creation between the supplier and customer. Therefore, industrial customers need to transform their procurement processes in order to improve the potential of profiting from digitalization. We use data gathered from multiple case study of 8 large companies in Sweden to develop a procurement process for digitally enabled advanced services. The proposed process consists of 4 phases with key activities at each phase. These are based on a close interaction between the internal actors of customer organization, as well as co-creation logic between customer and supplier, leading to a win-win relationship and continuous innovation.