Prerequisites and Causal Recipes for Manufacturers’ IT-Enabled Service Innovation Success

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Abstract

For manufacturing firms, success in innovating IT-enabled services is a critical antecedent to benefiting from the digital servitization of their business models. Digital servitization literature has explored mechanisms for success in innovating IT-enabled services, indicating that the phenomenon is multifaceted and needs to be explained from multiple theoretical perspectives. We derive a conceptual model for success in innovating IT-enabled services covering its multifaceted nature by referring to knowledge-based and organizational control theory. We test this model using qualitative cases of IT-enabled service innovation initiatives in manufacturing firms and use set-theoretic analyses to account for the multifaceted nature of the phenomenon. The necessary condition analysis yields that a certain degree of service innovation capabilities is a prerequisite for success. With the results of a qualitative comparative analysis, we obtain five solution terms as causal recipes for success in innovating IT-enabled services. Our results contribute to research by offering a theory-based approach that explains the multiplicity of success in IT-enabled service innovation. Practitioners benefit from our results by understanding prerequisites and causal recipes for success while learning from unsuccessful initiatives in innovating IT-enabled services of manufacturing firms. Our study is also an example of how to rigorously calibrate qualitative data using a structured approach.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number9
Pages (from-to)205-256
Number of pages52
JournalCommunications of the Association for Information Systems
Volume55
Issue number1
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2024
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-9465-9679/work/163295040
Scopus 85201730099

Keywords

Research priority areas of TU Dresden

DFG Classification of Subject Areas according to Review Boards

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Keywords

  • Case Study, IT-Enabled Service Innovation, Manufacturing Firms, Qualitative Comparative Analysis, Qualitative Data Calibration