Moving from products to solutions: Strategic approaches for developing capabilities

Marco Paiola, Nicola Saccani, Marco Perona and Heiko Gebauer

European Management Journal, 2013, vol. 31, issue 4, 390-409

Abstract: The move being made by manufacturers of capital goods from offering products to solutions implies that they must make a decision as to whether the capabilities necessary for providing solutions should be developed internally or externally. However, research has often implied an internal capability development option, and focused mostly on multinational companies. Through multiple case studies, this paper provides a deeper understanding of the strategic decisions about the “make or buy” of capabilities. A framework is proposed for classifying the different approaches adopted by firms, consisting of two dimensions. The first one encompasses the service components driving the move from products to solutions, whilst the second one describes whether the capabilities are developed internally, externally or in a mixed way. The empirical application of the framework suggests four distinct strategic approaches relating the service components and the development of capabilities. They are named “selling after-sales services”, “integrating after-sales solutions”, “selling life-cycle solutions” and “orchestrating total solutions”. The description of these approaches enriches the understanding of the ways in which firms move towards the provision of integrated solutions. Finally, the inclusion in the sample of smaller firms allows to extend the discussion about the transition from products to solutions to contexts different from those of multinational enterprises generally studied.

Keywords: Capital goods manufacturers; Services; Solutions; Capabilities; “Make or buy” (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263237312000977
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eurman:v:31:y:2013:i:4:p:390-409

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/115/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... me/115/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.emj.2012.10.002

Access Statistics for this article

European Management Journal is currently edited by Michael Haenlein

More articles in European Management Journal from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().