An entrepreneurial framework for value co-creation in servitization

Abstract

The importance of value co-creation in servitization is increasingly emphasized but remains largely unexplored from the entrepreneurship theoretical perspective. This study develops an entrepreneurial framework for value co-creation in servitization by conducting a qualitative case study with middle managers from a multinational industrial company. The empirical findings suggest that value co-creation facilitates the discovery and creation of service opportunities through middle managers' entrepreneurial actions, that is, boundary spanning and bricolage. We also find that servitization reinforces value co-creation through middle managers' exploitation or exploration of service opportunities. The study not only offers new knowledge on the mutual influence between value co-creation and servitization, but also discusses the importance of middle managers as individual level actors in value co-creation. In addition, this study acts as a call for entrepreneurship frameworks for research on servitization.