The relationships between digitalization and ecosystem-related capabilities for service innovation in agricultural machinery manufacturers

Abstract

Manufacturers seeking to provide smart product-service systems require new sets of capabilities such as digitalization and ecosystem-related capabilities. Studies have investigated these capabilities separately, although it seems to have an unexplored convergence between them. Therefore, this article aims to identify the digitalization and ecosystem-related capabilities of manufacturers in the agricultural machinery industry that are seeking digital servitization and offering smart product-service systems. Moreover, it aims to uncover the relationships among these capabilities to determine their driving and dependence power. A combination of methods was employed to achieve this result. First, a systematic literature review was conducted to define key digitalization and ecosystem-related capabilities. Next, the Interpretive Structural Modelling and fuzzy MICMAC analysis were employed to define the capabilities’ driving power and dependence power. By combining these analyses, we propose a conceptual framework that integrates these two sets of capabilities, which is comprised of three macro-layers: driving, linkage, and dependent. This article contributes to the literature by showing the interrelationships between digitalization and ecosystem-related capabilities. Also, it proposes a conceptual framework that groups capabilities based on their contributions to the development of digital service innovation.