A Taxonomy of Industrial Service Systems Enabled by Digital Product Innovation

Against the backdrop of pervasive digitization, industrial equipment in the manufacturing industry is increasingly augmented with digital technology. Since the industrial service business plays a growing role for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), the physical and digital materiality of industrial equipment particularly has gained importance for service innovation. Despite these new opportunities, OEMs, industrial equipment operators, and service organizations struggle to (1) identify and build up adequate technological capabilities and (2) fully harness the potential of digital product innovation for their service business. Within this paper, we propose an evaluated taxonomy to classify and better understand industrial service systems enabled by digital product innovation. As an anchor in theory, we draw on the service-dominant logic and the theory of affordances. The taxonomy helps practitioners to better understand the impact of digital product innovation on the service business in respective industry contexts.