Enabling Business Transformation through Servitization: The role of Open Innovation and Collaboration Strategies in Commercial Real Estate - A multiple Swedish businesses empirical analysis

Abstract

Commercial real estate industry is undergoing some major transformations that are disrupting its traditional dynamics and imposing to companies a proactive response. Technological advancements, new business models and changing in client needs create the conditions to reorient the solutions towards a more complete customer experience by providing services aiming to solve the complex user’s problems. It implies a set of totally new challenges that are related to the management of the transformation process and to the definition of collaboration ecosystems to provide the services. This research investigates in particular the role of open innovation and collaboration strategies in enabling the servitization process, understanding the main benefits and challenges of providing product-service-systems and identifying the key areas where external resources can have an impact. In this explorative study, several companies involved in the servitization process, such as commercial real estate companies, corporate real estate divisions and real estate partners, have been interviewed and analyzed in order to generate an organic and detailed framework and to meaningfully contribute to the existing literature dealing with the problem. The research demonstrates that open innovation is an enabler of the servitization process and can play a key role in shaping the company creation of services. In detail, the paper contains a description of the way collaboration strategies can address the specific challenges associated with servitization and provide the tools to maximize the opportunity creation for the companies. Additionally, the research presents a visualization of the impact of open innovation in the Service Value Web, showing which aspects have to be prioritized to maximize the value creation process in services and to create a strong customer experience.