Impacts of Servitization Strategies on Ecosystem Leadership Development

The surge of interest in servitization in the strategic management literature focuses mainly on intra-firm issues. This study complements work on servitization by positing that servitization represents a radical shift in how ecosystems are renewed and how ecosystem leadership is developed. Servitization changes the way the focal firm creates, delivers, and captures value for its consumers, consequently impacting the entire multi-actor “chain” of value creation. We argue that during the ecosystem renewal stage, adopting different types of servitization strategies has different effects on ecosystem leadership development. We develop a conceptual framework to analyze the impact that different servitization strategies have on ecosystem leadership development. We use a real-world case to illustrate and support our conceptual framework. We discuss different implications of our framework for ecosystem alignment, ecosystem business models, and collaborations. The study contributes to the growing research on the interplay between servitization and ecosystems. JEL Codes: M1