Chapter 13: Creating and Delivering Sustainable Customer Solutions: On Organizing Capabilities in the Era of Servitization

Increasingly, product companies are attempting to offer solutions rather than standalone goods. However, recent field data show product companies tend to follow their product-centric doctrine to deal with solutions. In fact, the value of a solution for customers is to get their particular problems solved in the long run.

In this chapter, a new view (a circular process view) of solutions is introduced to help product companies to cocreate sustainable solutions with their customers. Derived from this new view, the required distinctive capabilities for organizing sustainable customer solutions are elaborated. They are (1) understanding the customer’s actual and ongoing needs, (2) organizing responsive systems integration, (3) ensuring continuous customer value creation, and (4) sustaining the solution in the network.